Ordering knowledge roman empire

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O R D E R I N G K N OW L E D G E I N T H E RO M A N E M P I R E

The Romans commanded the largest and most complex empire the world had ever seen, or would see until modern times. The challenges, however, were not just political, economic and military: Rome was also the hub of a vast information network, drawing in worldwide expertise and refashioning it for its own purposes. This groundbreaking collection of essays considers the dialogue between technical literature and imperial society, drawing on, developing and critiquing a range of modern cultural theories (including those of Michel Foucault and Edward Said). How was knowledge shaped into textual forms, and how did those forms encode relationships between emperor and subjects, theory and practice, Roman and Greek, centre and periphery? Ordering Knowledge in the Roman Empire will be required reading for those concerned with the intellectual and cultural history of the Roman Empire, and its lasting legacy in the medieval world and beyond. ¨ ig is Senior Lecturer in Greek and Classical Studies at j ason k on the University of St Andrews. He is author of Athletics and Literature in the Roman Empire (2005), and of a wide range of articles on the Greek literature and culture of the Roman world. t i m wh i t m ars h is E. P. Warren Praelector in Classics at Corpus Christi College and Lecturer in Greek Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. His publications include Greek Literature and the Roman Empire (2001), Ancient Greek Literature (2004) and The Second Sophistic (2005).

O R D E R I N G K N OW L E D G E I N T H E RO M A N E M P I R E edited by ¨ J A SO N K O N IG A N D T I M W H I T MA R S H

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521859691 © Cambridge University Press 2007 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2007

ISBN-13

978-0-511-50810-3

eBook (NetLibrary)

ISBN-13

978-0-521-85969-1

hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

page vii

Preface Notes on contributors List of abbreviations

viii xi

part i: in trod uction 1 Ordering knowledge

3

Jason K¨onig and Tim Whitmarsh

pa rt ii: k n ow ledge and tex tual order 2 Fragmentation and coherence in Plutarch’s Sympotic Questions

43

Jason K¨onig

3 Galen and Athenaeus in the Hellenistic library

69

John Wilkins

4 Guides to the wor(l)d

88

Andrew M. Riggsby

5 Petronius’ lessons in learning – the hard way

108

Victoria Rimell

6 Diogenes La¨ertius, biographer of philosophy

133

James Warren

7 The creation of Isidore’s Etymologies or Origins John Henderson

v

150

vi

Contents

part iii: kn owled ge and social order 8 Knowledge and power in Frontinus’ On aqueducts

177

Alice K¨onig

9 Measures for an emperor: Volusius Maecianus’ monetary pamphlet for Marcus Aurelius

206

Serafina Cuomo

10 Probing the entrails of the universe: astrology as bodily knowledge in Manilius’ Astronomica

229

Thomas Habinek

11 Galen’s imperial order of knowledge

241

Rebecca Flemming

Bibliography Index

278 300

Preface

We are grateful to the Master and Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, for funding of the December 2001 conference on which this volume is based; and to all who participated in that event. We would also like to thank Michael Sharp and Sarah Parker at Cambridge University Press, and the anonymous readers for the volume; and also colleagues at Cambridge, Exeter and St Andrews, many of them working on related projects, for ideas and support (within the Exeter Centre for Hellenistic and Romano-Greek Studies and the St Andrews Logos Centre for study of ancient systems of knowledge). We are grateful especially to Simon Goldhill for comments on Chapter 1.

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Contributors

S e r afin a Cu omo is Reader at Imperial College London, and a historian of ancient Greek and Roman science and technology. She works in particular on the political, social and economic significance of ancient forms of knowledge, and has written on science in late antiquity, on ancient mathematics, on military technology and on Roman landsurveying. Her third book, Technology and Culture in Greek and Roman Antiquity, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. R e b e cca Flemming is Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of Medicine and the Making of Roman Women: Gender, Nature, and Authority from Celsus to Galen (Oxford University Press, 2000), and a range of essays and articles on women and medicine in the ancient world, both jointly and separately. She is currently writing a book on medicine and empire in the Roman world. Tho ma s Ha binek is Professor of Classics at the University of Southern California. He has published extensively on Latin literature and Roman cultural history. His most recent book is The World of Roman Song: From Ritualized Speech to Social Order (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). He is currently at work on an interdisciplinary project linking humanistic and natural scientific approaches to the human capacity for imitation and its role in cultural change. Jo hn Hen ders on is Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of King’s College. His books include monographs on Plautus, Phaedrus, Seneca, Statius, Pliny and Juvenal, besides general studies of epic, comedy, satire, history, art, culture and the history of classics, and The Medieval World of Isidore of Seville: Creating Truth through Words (Cambridge University Press, 2007). Alice K o¨ nig is Lecturer in Latin at the University of St Andrews. Her recent research has focused on Latin ‘technical’ literature, particularly viii

Notes on contributors

ix

the works of Frontinus and Vitruvius. She is currently revising her PhD thesis, on Frontinus’ three surviving treatises, for publication. ¨ ig is Senior Lecturer in Greek and Classical Studies at the Jason K on University of St Andrews. He is author of Athletics and Literature in the Roman Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2006), and of a wide range of articles on the Greek literature and culture of the Roman world. He is currently engaged, with Greg Woolf, in a project funded by the Leverhulme Trust on Science and Empire in the Ancient World. An drew M. R iggsby is Associate Professor of Classics and of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Crime and Community in Ciceronian Rome (University of Texas Press, 1999) and Caesar in Gaul and Rome: War in Words (University of Texas Press, 2006). He works on the cultural history of Republican Roman political institutions and on the cognitive history of the Roman world. Vic toria Rim ell teaches Latin literature at the University of Rome, La Sapienza. She is author of Petronius and the Anatomy of Fiction (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and Ovid’s Lovers: Desire, Difference and the Poetic Imagination (Cambridge University Press, 2006), and editor of Orality and Representation in the Ancient Novel (Ancient Narrative Supplement, 2007). Jam es Warren is Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Cambridge and Fellow and Director of Studies in Philosophy at Corpus Christi College. He is the author of Epicurus and Democritean Ethics: an Archaeology of Ataraxia (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and Facing Death: Epicurus and his Critics (Oxford University Press, 2004). Ti m Whitm ars h is E. P. Warren Praelector in Classics at Corpus Christi College and Lecturer in Greek Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. A specialist in the Greek literature and culture of the imperial period, he is the author of Greek Literature and the Roman Empire (Oxford University Press, 2001), Ancient Greek Literature (Polity Press, 2004), The Second Sophistic (Cambridge University Press, 2005), and Reading the Self in the Ancient Greek Novel (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). He is currently working on interactions between Greek and Semitic narrative. John Wilk ins is Professor of Greek Culture at the University of Exeter. His books include Euripides: Heraclidae (Oxford University Press, 1993),

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Notes on contributors The Boastful Chef: The Discourse of Food in Ancient Greek Comedy (Oxford University Press, 2000) and (with Shaun Hill) Food in the Ancient World (Blackwell, 2006). He edited (with David Braund) Athenaeus and his World (University of Exeter Press, 2000) and is currently preparing editions of Galen, De alimentorum facultatibus for the Bud´e series and the Corpus Medicorum Graecorum.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations for Greek and Latin authors, and for scholarly resources, follow those used in S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth (eds.) (1996) The Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd edn) Oxford; where author abbreviations are not found in OCD, usual conventions are followed. Exception is made in the case of Galen’s works, for which a full list of abbreviations used in this volume is given below. Journal abbreviations follow Ann´ee Philologique, with occasional anglicisations. All other abbreviations are listed below. CIL = Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (1863–) CISem. = Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum (1881–) CMG = Corpus Medicorum Graecorum (1908–) CML = Corpus Medicorum Latinorum (1915–) FGrH = Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (1923–) eds. F. Jacoby et al. IG = Inscriptiones Graecae, 2nd edn (1924–) ILS = Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, ed. H. Dessau (1892–1916) K = Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia, 20 vols., ed. C. G. K¨uhn (1821–33) LSJ = A Greek–English Lexicon, 9th edn, H. G. Liddell, R. Scott et al. (1996) Migne PL = Patrologiae Cursus, Series Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne (1863–) OCD = Oxford Classical Dictionary OCT = Oxford Classical Text OLD = Oxford Latin Dictionary, ed. P. G. W. Glare, corrected edn (1996) PVindob. = Papyrus Vindobonensis PHerc. = Papyrus Herculanensis POxy. = Oxyrhynchus Papyrus SM = Claudii Galeni Pergameni Scripta Minora, 3 vols. (1884–93) eds. J. Marquardt, I. M¨uller and G. Helmreich, Leipzig.

xi

xii

Abbreviations galen

Abbreviations and editions used for the works of Galen and other medical writers. AA De anatomicis administrationibus (‘On anatomical procedures’), books 1–8 from ii K, books 9–15 (extant only in Arabic) from Simon (1906) Alim. fac. De alimentorum facultatibus (‘On the properties of foodstuffs’), CMG 5.4.2 Ant. De antidotis (‘On antidotes’), xiv K Ars med. Ars medica (‘The medical art’), Boudon (2000) Comp. med. gen. De compositione medicamentorum secundum genera (‘On the compounding of drugs according to kinds’), xiii K Comp. med. loc. De compositione medicamentorum secundum locos (‘On the compounding of drugs according to places’), xii–xiii K Cris. De crisibus (‘On crises’), Alexanderson (1967) Foet. form. De foetuum formatione (‘On the formation of the foetus’), CMG 5.3.3 Food see under Alim. fac. Lib. prop. De libris propriis (‘On my own books’), SM ii Loc. aff. De locis affectis (‘On the affected parts’), viii K MM De methodo medendi (‘On the therapeutic method’), x K Nerv. diss. De nervorum dissectione (‘On the dissection of the nerves’), ii K Ord. lib. prop. De ordine librorum propriorum (‘On the order of my own books’), SM ii Part. art. med. De partibus artis medicativae (‘On the parts of the art of medicine’), CMG supp. or. ii PHP De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis (‘On the doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato’), CMG v 4.1.1–3 Praen. De praenotione ad Epigenem (‘On prognosis’), CMG v.8.1 Prop. plac. De propriis placitis (‘On my own opinions’), CMG v.3.2 Simples see under SMT

Abbreviations SMT Ther. Thras. UP

xiii

De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis ac facultatibus (‘On the mixtures and properties of simple drugs’), xi–xii K De theriaca ad Pisonem (‘On theriac to Piso’), xiv K Thrasybulus, SM iii De usu partium (‘On the usefulness of parts’), Helmreich (1907–9) editions

Alexanderson, B. (1967) Peri Kriseˆon Galenos. Stockholm Boudon, V. (2000) Galien II: Exhortation a` la M´edecine. Art M´edical. Paris Daremberg, C. and Ruelle, E. (1879) Oeuvres de Rufus d’Eph`ese. Paris Garofalo, I. (ed.) (1997) Anonymi Medici de Morbis acutis et chroniis. Leiden Helmreich, G. (1907–9) Galeni De Usu Partium libri XVII, 2 vols. Leipzig Muhaqqiq, M. (ed.) (1993) Kitab al-Shukuk ‘ala Jalinus li-Muhammad ibn Zakariyya al-Razi. Tehran Sconocchia, S. (1983) Scribonii Largi Compositiones. Leipzig Simon, M, (1906) Sieben B¨ucher Anatomie des Galen, 2 vols. Leipzig Wellmann, M. (1906–14) Pedanius Dioscorides. De Materia Medica, 3 vols. Berlin

part i

Introduction

chapter 1

Ordering knowledge Jason K¨onig and Tim Whitmarsh

imperial knowled g e This volume seeks to explore the ways in which particular conceptions of knowledge and particular ways of textualising knowledge were entwined with social and political practices and ideals within the Roman Imperial period. In the process, we explore the possibility that the Roman Empire brought with it distinctive forms of knowledge, and, in particular, distinctive ways of ordering knowledge in textual form. The chapters following this one contain a series of case studies, examining the politics and poetics of knowledge-ordering within a wide range of texts, testing out each of them carefully for signs of their engagement with other works of similar type, and with the world around them. Our principal interest is in texts that follow a broadly ‘compilatory’ aesthetic, accumulating information in often enormous bulk, in ways that may look unwieldy or purely functional to modern eyes, but which in the ancient world clearly had a much higher prestige than modern criticism has allowed them. The prevalence of this mode of composition in the Roman world is astonishing, as will become clear in the course of this discussion. It is sometimes hard to avoid the impression that accumulation of knowledge is the driving force for all of Imperial prose literature. That obsession also makes its mark on verse, for example within the scrolls of didactic epic or in the anthologisation of epigrams. In this volume, we range across miscellanistic, encyclopedic, biographical, novelistic, philosophical, scientific, technical, didactic and historical works (insofar as these generic distinctions can be maintained), in Greek and Latin.1 Inevitably we cover only a tiny fraction of the texts such a project might engage with, picking especially works 1

Many of these areas have been largely neglected in recent scholarship, especially by scholars working in the area of cultural history, although in some cases that has begun to change. To take just one example, the field of ancient technical writing has seen a recent expansion of interest; relevant works not discussed further below include the following: F¨ogen (ed.) (2005), Horster and Reitz (eds.) (2003), Santini, Mastrorosa and Zumbo (eds.) (2002), Formisano (2001), Long (2001), Meissner

3

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¨ j a s on k onig and tim w hitmarsh

which seem to us to have paradigmatic status for habits of compilation in this period – although we have tried to convey something of the enormous (if inevitably unquantifiable) scale of this compilatory industry in our footnoted lists of known authors and works within a range of genres. The essays in Part 2, following this introduction, are focused especially on the way in which authors order their own texts and the writings of others. All of these chapters start by teasing out some of the ordering, structuring principles and patterns of the texts they examine, and move from there to discuss the cultural and political resonances of those patterns, and the ways in which they contribute to authorial self-positioning. The essays in Part 3 in addition address more head-on the question of how compilatory texts impose order on the extra-textual world. These chapters are generally more interested, in other words, in the way in which texts deal with practical challenges, and the way in which they take on images and ideals from the world around them – especially the world of empire – reshaping them and using them as structuring reference-points for their own projects. Needless to say, there can be no firm dividing line between those two approaches. However, the broad question of the ‘Imperialness’ or otherwise of these knowledge-ordering strategies – which is a central preoccupation of many (though not all) of the chapters which follow – cannot simply be left to emerge from these individual readings. This introduction attempts a preliminary answer to that question. The idea of an interrelation between knowledge and empire in the modern world is not new.2 Edward Said has shown how imperial ideologies shaped and were shaped by the rhetoric of modern European ethnography, and how they seeped into many other areas of discourse.3 There are countless studies, many of them drawing on Said’s work, which show how European scientific knowledge, and the knowledge of colonised cultures within European empires, developed step by step with the institutions and assumptions of empire.4 Those enquiries have illuminated, amongst other things, the role of science as a tool of empire; the influence of European science on conquered populations; the ways in which local knowledge

2 3 4

(1999), Nicolet (ed.) (1995). All of those volumes share the aim of comparing and juxtaposing a range of different technical authors; many of them bring out vividly the way in which these at-first-sight purely functional texts manipulate shared tropes of structuration and authorial self-representation, often with a high degree of ingenuity (e.g., see Formisano (2001), esp. 27–31, on recurrent use of the rhetoric of utilitas, sollertia, diligentia and dissimulatio in late-antique technical writing). See Flemming (2003) for an attempt to relate work on modern empires to Hellenistic knowledge. Said (1978) and (1993). See, amongst many others, Stafford (1989), Macleod (1993), Bayly (1996), Miller and Reill (eds.) (1996), Washbrook (1999), Drayton (2000).

Ordering knowledge

5

influenced metropolitan scientific practice; the ways in which increased knowledge of the globe opened up new areas for scientific study; and the ways in which ideals of scientific progress and ambition were intertwined with metropolitan justifications of imperial domination. Moreover, modern practices of scientific writing have been significantly shaped by ancient models of objective and exhaustive compilation of knowledge within textual form – although this volume for the most part leaves to one side the question of the reception of ancient knowledge-ordering in the post-classical world.5 The structures of post-classical knowledgeordering – in the Arabic, medieval and Renaissance worlds and beyond – are indebted to ancient models.6 Modern encyclopedism follows the encyclopedic projects of Pliny and others, despite the great differences between modern and ancient conceptions of what an ‘encyclopedia’ comprises.7 One might therefore expect to see similar links between knowledgeordering texts and imperial ambitions in both the ancient and modern worlds. And yet when we read the knowledge-bearing texts of the Roman Empire, it is often difficult – more difficult than for much of the scientific writing of the British Empire, for example – to ground their relation with the imperial project in detailed analysis. Some ancient authors shun the impression of being implicated in the realities of imperial power. Many avoid the appearance of radical innovation, advertising instead their close relationship with the accumulated knowledge of the past. That difficulty can be partly explained by the tendency for imperialist rhetoric to conceal itself beneath the mask of objectivity or aesthetic elevation (as Said and others have shown). This point is crucial for ancient and modern empires alike. But that explanation is not on its own enough. We also need to acknowledge that the Roman Empire poses its own very particular problems of analysis – that the mutually parasitic relationship between ancient empire and knowledge arose from rhetorical traditions and institutional structures very different from anything familiar in the experience of modern European empires. Most obviously, the cultural impositions and interventionist strategies of administration that have characterised many 5

6 7

Equally we leave to one side any attempt at comparative approaches of the kind Geoffrey Lloyd has pioneered in juxtaposing Chinese science, and its context of empire, with Greek science and society: see esp. Lloyd (1996). See, e.g., Koerner (1999) on the influence of ancient knowledge-ordering texts on Linnaeus. See Collison (1964); McArthur (1986), esp. 38–56, who traces the development of compilatory writing from Aristotle and Pliny, through Christian compilers like Cassiodorus and Isidore of Seville, to the scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas and beyond; Arnar (1990); Yeo (2001) 5–12 on the descent of modern encyclopedism from ancient precedents, and passim on development of conceptions of encyclopedism in eighteenth-century Europe; also Murphy (2004) 11–12.

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of those empires find almost their inverse in the relatively light touch, in cultural terms, of Roman rule. What we need, then, is a set of questions sensitive to that specificity. That is the task of this introduction. knowled ge and power The links between knowledge and power more generally – putting aside for now the specific context of empire – have of course been much theorised. For Michel Foucault, most influentially, power is not simply a commodity, possessed by governments and influential individuals and exercised by them from above. Rather it is a complex network of relationships constantly being acted out and reshaped within even the smallest encounters of everyday life. Moreover, knowledge and its ‘will to truth’ are central to Foucauldian power. Epistemology cannot be divorced from particular social relations and situations. It is not some abstract activity, practised from a position of detachment; rather it is enacted within all institutions of social encounter. Each society, Foucault argues, has its own conditions for truth: that is, the type of discourse it harbours and causes to function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true from false statements, the way in which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures which are valorised for obtaining the truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true.8

Those who have access to the knowledge that holds a social and political system together necessarily control the distribution of power within that system. And yet truth is never stable and monolithic. Rather it is something open to debate and renegotiation, shaped and enacted through and within the workings of power. The systems of thought identifying individuals with certain roles do so not bluntly and coercively, but rather with the collusion of those individuals – through the creation of desire for particular subject positions. Negotiation of truth and power are thus ingrained in the textures of everyday life. When people act out particular roles, as parents and children, teachers and students, doctors and patients, they are constantly negotiating ‘questions of power, authority, and the control of definitions of reality’.9 Knowledge-bearing institutions and bodies of thought – medicine, hospitals, prisons, asylums – are embedded in and founded upon these relationships of power; and knowledge-bearing texts, often the texts that 8 9

Quotation from an interview with Foucault published in Gordon (1980) 131. Dirks, Eley and Ortner (1994) 4, part of a good brief discussion, setting Foucault’s work in the context of wider developments in anthropology, history and the social sciences; see also McNay (1994) 48–132.

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provide theoretical backing for those institutions, are profoundly marked by them, able to reveal beneath their dispassionate surfaces something of what it is possible to say or to think within the societies and disciplines from which they arise. The broad relevance of those points will be clear. The world of knowledge – comprising both the institutions defining it and the texts embodying it – is never neutral, detached, objective. The assumption that the textual compilation of knowledge is a practice distinct from political power will not stand. All of the texts examined in this volume are embedded both within the overarching hierarchies and patterns of thought of Romanempire society and within the power relations and power struggles of specific intellectual disciplines (more on that below)10 – although here again we should acknowledge how far our own experiences differ from those of the ancient world, where official institutionalisation of knowledge production was in general more localised and circumscribed. Similar conclusions – both inspired by Foucault’s work and developed in parallel to it – have increasingly preoccupied a whole range of modern academic disciplines. Feminist scholarship has revealed the gendered assumptions deeply rooted within centuries of male-produced and male-centred discourse.11 Anthropology has shown how the structuring hierarchies and thought patterns of a society may be ingrained even – or perhaps especially – within its most frivolous and abstract habits of cultural activity.12 Foucault’s challenging work is not without its difficulties, of course – in fact Foucault himself constantly struggled to revise and update his models during the course of his career.13 Most importantly for this volume, Foucault’s model of the functioning of power and knowledge on some readings leaves little or no room for the agency of individuals. Foucault’s insistence that resistance to power is always bound up in and reproductive of the systems it challenges has been thought to have pessimistic implications for the possibility of resistance to social injustice.14 Many of the essays in this volume address that problem, particularly through questioning the degree to which encyclopedic styles of composition allow and provoke varied reader response to the patterns of thought they showcase. How far, in other words, does knowledge imply subjection to historically determined forces? How do individuals carve out their own spaces within the overarching structures 10 11 13 14

Pp. 24–7; cf. Barton (1994b) on the scientific writing of the Roman Empire. 12 E.g., see Geertz (1973). See, e.g., Dirks, Eley and Ortner (1994) 32–6. See McNay (1994) 66–9 on Foucault’s attempts in The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972) to nuance his rather monolithic concept of the ‘episteme’ in The Order of Things (1970). See McNay (1994) 100–102.

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which they are formed by? And what role does textual presentation of knowledge play within those processes? Examination of the Roman Empire as a specific context for knowledge production also has relevance for Foucault’s conceptions of chronological change. Does Foucault’s model of ‘epistemic shifts’ between different periods with different systems of logic15 offer insight into the post-Augustan world, where the rhetoric of a ‘new start’ was paraded so widely? Or does that model play into the hands of a na¨ıve historicism, resting on simplistic modern periodisations of the ancient world? Should we be looking instead for a model that accounts for change in conceptions of knowledge as a gradual and painstaking evolution impelled by the pressures and innovations of competitive elite self-assertion? h ellenistic/ republican k nowledge One way of assessing the cultural and historical specificity of knowledgesystems of the Roman Empire is to view its relation with what had come before it. Certainly, they did not emerge e nihilo. Aristotle’s project of systematising knowledge across an enormous range of different subjects lies behind all of the texts we discuss in later chapters. Equally influential was the culture of Hellenistic Alexandria, which both inherited and developed Aristotelian scholarly practice. Here we see uniquely concrete links between the projects of political organisation and cultural systematisation. The Alexandrian library (later imitated in Pergamum and elsewhere) brought the whole world into a single city, broadcasting the glory of the Ptolemaic rule that had provided the conditions for its possibility. And a whole range of scholars imitated and influenced that totalising gesture in their individual works, covering a range of subjects inconceivable within the hyper-specialised world of modern academic writing: Zenodotus, for example, Homeric editor and lexicographer and first head of the Library; Callimachus, whose poetry flaunts its own dazzling generic flexibility, in combination with designedly abstruse bibliographical and historical knowledge; and most prodigiously of all, Eratosthenes, whose work covers mathematical, chronographical, geographical, philosophical and literary scholarship.16 Others outside Alexandria followed similar paths: Theophrastus, the successor of Aristotle in the Athenian Lyceum; Aratus, the poet-scholar based 15 16

See McNay (1994) 64–6. See Pfeiffer (1968), and now Erskine (ed.) (2003) (especially the chapters by Hunter (2003) and Flemming (2003)); for Eratosthenes, see the rich account of Geus (2002).

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in Pergamum; and Posidonius, the extraordinary polymath of the second to first centuries bce, who prospered in Rome. Many Imperial Greek writers depended heavily on their Hellenistic predecessors for both form and content. Similarly, their Latin counterparts often drew heavily from Hellenistic Greek work, while also following the agendas laid out by great Republican systematisers like Cicero and especially Varro, whose work covered history, grammar, geography, agriculture, law, philosophy, medicine and other fields.17 On that evidence, modern scholars of ancient science have sometimes concluded that Imperial compilers of knowledge were merely derivative.18 That approach, however, drastically underestimates the potential for innovativeness in compilatory styles of composition, as well as failing to examine the key questions of synchronic cultural analysis which this volume addresses. For one thing, it mistakes the rhetoric of conservatism often paraded by ancient scientific discourse for the real thing. The importance of rhetorical self-promotion within ancient science and medicine encouraged a degree of originality; but also paradoxically suppressed excessive inventiveness, as speakers and writers went out of their way to avoid the impression of showy innovation.19 It also ignores the opportunities for inventive reshaping embedded within the techniques of editing and compiling – inventiveness which several of the following chapters explore. And it fails to consider the ways in which even texts following broadly Hellenistic or Republican structures or styles of composition so often bring out the tension between older and newer configurations of knowledge. That is clear, for example, in works where the concept of geographical scope is an important structuring principle.20 Strabo’s geographical history,21 for instance, or Pausanias’ Periegesis,22 work with fundamentally Hellenistic conceptions of space, but are also acutely aware of the way in which Roman rule has reconfigured the geography of the Greek east. Pliny’s Natural history draws into itself the accumulated erudition of the Greek and Roman past, but in doing so it 17 18 19 20 22

On the late-Republican intellectual scene see esp. Rawson (1985). On modern scholarship’s deprecation of Imperial literature on the grounds of derivativeness, see Whitmarsh (2001) 41–5. See Lloyd (1996) 74–92 (esp. 90–92) on medical writers. On the ambiguities of innovation in rhetorical theory, see Whitmarsh (2005a) 54–6. 21 See Clarke (1999), esp. 193–244. For the general point, see Momigliano (1974) 27–49. See Cohen (2001) for the argument that Pausanias’ worldview is more ‘Hellenistic’ than, for example, Strabo’s, less comfortably integrated with Roman imperial geography; see, however, Elsner (1992) and (1994), and (from a different perspective) Arafat (1996) for Pausanias’ engagement with the realities of the Roman present.

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repeatedly invites us to compare this accumulation with patterns of Roman topographical dominance.23 A number of scholars have also suggested causal links between the political and cultural conditions which framed the transition from Republic to Empire and the emergence of distinctive knowledge-ordering genres. Claudia Moatti has argued that the drive to assemble disparate strands of knowledge was a response to the fragmentation of late-Republican society and political culture.24 Andrew Wallace-Hadrill has linked the move towards specialised knowledge under Augustus with shifting ideas of political authority.25 Trevor Murphy has pointed out that the ‘encyclopedia’ is a Roman invention, but also a product of the Roman encounter with Greek ideals of all-embracing education (enkyklios paideia) – the alienness of this concept for Romans drove them to attempt a fixed, textual version of it, as opposed to the more fluid version which was enshrined within centuries of Greek educational tradition – and dependent on the territorial and intellectual ambitions of a unified empire. In the process he shows how Pliny’s encyclopedic project in particular is adapted for the context of the Roman Empire, drawing, for example, on the rhetoric of imperial conquest and the emperor’s authority (more on that below).26 local knowledg e One of the most distinctive features of Roman Imperial conceptions of geographical space was its insistence on the co-existence of overarching identities with local ones, in line with both the inclusive ideology of Roman rule and Panhellenic visions of the world, where civic individuality is compatible with, even necessary for, the perpetuation of shared Greek identity. How far can we see those tensions reflected in Imperial textualisations of knowledge? And how far should we distinguish between different contexts for local knowledge within the melting-pot of Roman culture? There are some signs of regional clusters of specialisms. For example, Athens, Alexandria, Tarsus, Aegae and Pergamum were all thriving centres of rhetorical and philosophical education.27 And yet those concentrations 23 24 26

27

See French (1994) 207–18; Murphy (2003) and (2004); Carey (2003), esp. 32–40. 25 See Wallace-Hadrill (1997), discussed further below, p. 21. Moatti (1988), (1991) and (1997). See pp. 20–2, and Murphy (2004), esp. 13–14 and 194–6 on the origins of Roman encyclopedism; cf. McEwen (2003) on the way in which Vitruvius’ project links itself with its political context by appropriating the metaphor of the empire as a unified body in order to apply that to the discipline of architecture. See Natali (2000) 210.

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leave very few textual traces. Roman Empire writing tends to emphasise (variably conceived) intellectual cosmopolitanism ahead of provincial specificity28 . There are some exceptions, where an insistence on cosmopolitanism leads paradoxically to a strong sense of place, focused on iconic cultural centres like Rome and Athens. Galen, who is reticent about his medical training in Pergamum but conjures up a vivid portrait of the medical and philosophical scene in Rome,29 is a case in point – although even he is often vague about the precise setting of the medical debates he describes, conjuring up an imagined, utopian landscape of shared intellectual endeavour, which also stretches back over the centuries, allowing him to enter into dialogue with his medical predecessors. Aulus Gellius, similarly, implies a cosmopolitan but specifically Athenian setting for the miscellaneous collection of conversations and reminiscences in his Attic nights. Plutarch does much the same with Delphi in his Delphic dialogues. But Athens and Delphi and Rome were unusual cases. Where Imperial writers do grant specific forms of local knowledge to provincial contexts, it is usually to tease them for their failure to match normal Panhellenic standards, as in Dio Chrysostom’s comical portrait of the cultural backwaters of Borysthenes and Euboea (although for the Cynic moralist, such places also offer positive lessons for his Prusan audience).30 There is evidence for the continuing importance of local history, but with the near-total loss of this genre, and few signs of its lateral impact on other literature, it is hard to press any strong claims on its behalf.31 That relative invisibility of local context does at least have some resonance with the increasing emphasis within anthropology and modern history on the importance of seeing ‘local knowledges’ not as self-contained and inward-looking ways of seeing the world, but rather as bodies of thought which engage with and contribute to universal knowledge.32 But it may well make us uncomfortable even so, trained as we are to insist on the potentially disruptive power of local, marginal voices within the homogenising textures 28 31

32

29 See Nutton (1972). 30 Trapp (1995). See pp. 18–20 below. See Bowie (1974) 184–8. Others local historians dated by Jacoby to the Imperial period might be added to Bowie’s list: e.g., Lyceas of Argos,
       (Paus. 1.13.8 = FGrH 312); Posidonius of Olbia, author of Attic histories (FGrH 335 = 279 T1); Glaucippus, author of a tract on the religion of Athens (FGrH 363); Telephanes, author of On the city (FGrH 371); Menelaus of Aegae, author of a work on Boeotia (FGrH 384); Callippus of Corinth, author of a history of Orchomenoi (FGrH 384); Timagenes or Timogenes of Miletus, author of On Heracleia in Pontus (FGrH 435); Theseus, author of Corinthian matters (FGrH 453); Crito, author of Sicilian matters, Foundations of Syracuse and a Tour of Syracuse (FGrH 277 T1); Phlegon of Tralles, author of a description of Sicily (FGrH 257 T1). See, e.g., Moore (1996).

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of global and imperial culture. Are all the textual traces of knowledge found across the Empire invariably in collusion with the globalising ideals of the centre? Were there other bodies of local knowledge separate from the Empire’s literate, intellectual culture, which are simply too faint for us to bring back to life? Even here, of course, there are exceptions, texts that take on the cosmopolitan tropes of elite culture and twist them in order to speak from resistant corners of the Mediterranean world. Lucian’s satirical insight into Greco-Roman elite culture is founded on his pose of being a Syrian outsider to the cultural centres of the Empire33 . But such cases, far from representing indigenous tradition countering imperial superimposition, clearly demonstrate that they are always already imperialised. The concept of the local only becomes operative when globalisation is already at work. There is also a different order of issue, focused on the relationship between textual and ritual knowledge. Jack Goody has influentially emphasised the role of listing as a literate technique, a technology that produces habits of thought connected specifically with literature cultures.34 And yet in the ancient world listing and cataloguing have strong links with orality (from Homer’s catalogue of ships onwards) and with ritual (for example, with the kinds of enumeration which guided and memorialised processional activity). We should perhaps give more weight to the ritual overtones of listing even within the apparently functional pages of the Roman Empire’s scientific and miscellanistic writing. For example, Plutarch’s Sympotic questions (as Jason K¨onig argues further in his chapter) records philosophical conversations set in specific Greek cities, often at festival banquets. Plutarch thus aligns his own compilatory work with the rhythms of festival life, casting it as a performance of cultural memory to match the habits of cultural memorialisation which were ingrained in local life. Thomas Habinek’s chapter shows how Manilius uses the image of sacrificial ritual both for his astrological knowledge and for his own activity as a vates, a poet-prophet figure. Ovid’s poetic exposition of the Roman calendar in the Fasti, again, is a subversive meditation on the ritual and theological culture of Rome, built around the defamiliarising juxtaposition of Roman ritual patterns with a Greek framework of astrological and mythographical knowledge.35 In these works, at least, the stark details of scientific and biographical compilation engage with the distinctive and familiar contours of local life and ritual experience in more sustained ways than is initially obvious. 33 35

See further below, pp. 13–14. See Feeney (1998) 123–33.

34

See Goody (1977) 74–111; for criticisms, see Miyoshi (1994).

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knowing philosophy Questions of knowledge will inevitably end up confronting philosophy. Our concern is not here with philosophical epistemology as such;36 it is rather with the cultural valency of philosophical knowledge, its quasiinstitutionalised status within society. Ancient philosophical theory, almost by definition, often aimed at totalisation: adherents of one view held it to the reasoned exclusion of other alternatives, personally committing to the idea of its superiority. (This goes even for the Pyrrhonists, sceptical antidogmatists who disdained all philosophical positions.) Yet by virtue of its exclusions, spoken or unspoken, philosophy necessarily acknowledged the co-existence (albeit not the equal value) of alternative perspectives; ongoing border disputes implied that the process of totalisation was never complete. In many cases these border disputes were all the more urgent for the fact that mutual influence between different schools was so strong. By the time of the empire, the consolidation of philosophical schools, each with its own tenets and dogma, had created a market-place in knowledge.37 No philosopher was just a philosopher: s/he was a Stoic, Epicurean, Cynic, Sceptic, Academician . . . Viewed from outside, however, the conflicts between the schools could be considered evidence for the impossibility of totalisation: if philosophers cannot agree what they know, can there be anything at all to know? This position is dramatised perhaps most eloquently by the satirist Lucian. His Sale of lives, for example, presents a slave-market where a potential buyer surveys a series of potential philosophers desperate to whore their trade.38 His Symposium, meanwhile, works playfully against Plato’s and Xenophon’s texts of the same name: in contrast with their paradigms of social and intellectual order, Lucian represents his philosophers – all from different schools – warring drunkenly and bitterly.39 These powerfully vivid narrative metaphors (the slave auction, convivial disharmony) for the philosophical market-place do more than simply debunk the authority of philosophers; 36 37 38 39

Schofield, Burnyeat and Barnes (eds.) (1980); Everson (1990); Striker (1996). On the development of philosophical schools, cf. Boys-Stones (2001); also Hahn (1989). See further Whitmarsh (2001) 258–60. See Branham (1989); similarly Alciphron Letters 3.19 – in a closely related narrative probably written in imitation of Lucian – portrays philosophers brawling at a dinner party, each of them misbehaving in ways appropriate to his own philosophical school. Lucian and Alciphron are here parodying ideals of sympotic co-operation between different specialists, where playful rivalry between a range of professional viewpoints contributes to an atmosphere of convivial harmony: e.g., see Jacob (2001) xxii–xxvi on Athenaeus, and Hardie (1992) 4754–6 (discussed further in Jason K¨onig’s chapter, below) on Plutarch’s Sympotic questions.

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they also seek to comprehend and express the bewildering variety of claims to philosophical knowledge under the Empire. In doing that, Lucian is staking his own claim to knowledge – although knowledge of a different kind, to be sure. To figure, to allegorise, to encapsulate in narrative, is to master. In Icaromenippus, Menippus (the primary narrator) describes flying to the moon, while looking down upon the world and the philosophers’ parochial discussions. Lucian’s satire offers a different – and by implication, ‘loftier’ – epistemological order to philosophy. Here, as elsewhere in his work,40 Lucianic knowingness looks down upon philosophical knowledge. The Hermotimus, to take another example, stages a dialectic struggle between Lycinus (the Lucianic figure in the text) and the eponymous Stoic; inevitably Lycinus wins out, converting Hermotimus to his view. This is not, however, a simple conversion from one allegiance to another, but a radical refocusing: ‘do not think I am set against the Stoa . . . my discourse is equally hostile to all’ (  
, 85). Lucian’s negative epistemology, however, is itself parasitical upon philosophy. In reducing Hermotimus to tears within a dialectic framework, Lycinus is replaying the role of Socrates in the early, ‘aporetic’ dialogues of Plato (and, indeed, there are also Stoic and Sceptical elements to his arguments throughout).41 The famous apophthegm in the True stories, ‘the one true thing I will say is that I am telling lies’ (1.4), is a calculated echo of Socrates’ claim to wisdom on the grounds that ‘what I do not know I do not think I know’ (Plato, Apology 21d).42 Elsewhere, this self-consciously fickle author assumes the guise of an Epicurean (in the Alexander), a Sceptic or a Cynic,43 ransacking the closet of philosophical masks in the service of anti-philosophical satire. Some works (Demonax, Nigrinus) even portray certain philosophers with approbation – philosophers who are, of course, critical of (among other social institutions) other philosophers. Lucian construes satire, we might say, as metaphilosophy. It is centrally preoccupied with philosophical questions of truth and knowledge; but at the same time, it exists above and beyond the mundane, interdogmatic squabbles of the philosophical sects. This is the point of that imagery of lunar travel in the Icaromenippus: satire is (or presents itself as) a cosmic, universalising vision of humanity in its most pared-down form, unencumbered by issues of cultural, social, political or sectarian difference. In that sense, the Lucianic worldview is as universalising, even totalising, as the philosophical systems upon which it feeds so voraciously. 40 41 43

Cf. Nigr. 18; Astr. 13–19; Somn. 13; more generally, Georgiadou and Larmour (1998) 15–16. 42 R¨ M¨ollendorff (2000) 197–210. utten (1997) 30–1; Georgiadou and Larmour (1998) 57–8. For Lucian’s personae, see Whitmarsh (2001) 247–94, Goldhill (2002) 63–7.

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hellenised knowledg e Satire was not the only form of metaphilosophy. The project of comprehending philosophy within an overarching framework, of unifying wisdom into a meaningful whole that transcended the sum of its parts, can be seen in a range of synthetic works of what we have come to call (following Hermann Diels) ‘doxography’. The genre developed in the Hellenistic period, but most of the key figures of the early phase – Antigonus of Carystus, Hermippus, Sotion, Sosicrates of Rhodes, Diocles of Rhodes – are known to us only sciagraphically from fragments preserved in later doxographers.44 Doxography flourished in the Imperial period, notable cases being Alcinous’ Handbook of Platonism, Arius Didymus’ On the philosophical sects,45 Aetius’ Collection of doctrines,46 and, most of all, Diogenes Laertius’ Lives and opinions of the philosophers (see James Warren’s chapter).47 Much doxographical material can also be found in miscellanies such as Favorinus’ Memorabilia,48 and Aulus Gellius’ Attic nights.49 These works have appealed to scholars particularly as sources for earlier thought. Certainly they had their roots in the traditions of Aristotle and the Hellenistic scholars,50 but there was also a strong contemporary cultural imperative lying behind them, particularly relating to issues of Greek cultural identity. In his prologue (as James Warren emphasises) Diogenes argues, against those who see its origins as lying in the East, that philosophy is definitively and constitutively Greek; indeed, the human race itself began in Greece (1.3). This metaphilosophical project may be universalising in one sense, in that it synthesises philosophy across time and place, but it is also closely integrated with Diogenes’ ideological programme for the present. Diogenes constructs a symbolic empire of knowledge that emblematises the aspirations of contemporary Hellenism. Diogenes’ attempt to ‘purify’ philosophy represents an extreme case of the ‘invention of tradition’.51 At the other pole, we find a radical emphasis upon philosophical hybridity: Greek wisdom is variously said to be rooted in, or no better than, Egyptian, Babylonian, Jewish, Indian and others. Lucian 44 45 47

48 49 51

Philodemus of Gadara, some of whose works are partially preserved among the Herculaneum papyri, was also concerned with the synthesis of philosophy; for an overview see Obbink (1996) 81–3. 46 Mansfeld and Runia (1997); Bremmer (1998). Della Corte (1991). Other doxographical works include, e.g., Albinus or Alcinous of Smyrna (2nd cent. ce), Digest of Plato’s philosophy and Introduction to Plato’s dialogues; Atticus’ (2nd cent. ce) work (title lost) on the categories of philosophy; Pseudo-Galen (2nd cent. ce?), On the history of philosophy; Hierocles (2nd cent. ce) Exposition of ethics and other works; Pseudo-Plutarch (2nd cent. ce?); Sextus Empiricus (2nd–3rd cent. ce), Outlines of Pyrrhonism. Holford-Strevens (1997), (2003) 98–130. 50 See pp. 8–10 above. Holford-Strevens (2003); Holford-Strevens and Vardi (eds.) (2004). Hobsbawm and Ranger (eds.) (1983).

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claims that philosophy originated in India (Runaways 6–7); Numenius of Apamea, the Pythagorean or Platonist of the second or third century ce, famously asks ‘what is Plato but an Atticising Moses?’ (fr. 13 Guthrie). An alternative strategy is to include exoticising elements within Greek philosophy. Thus, for example, Dio Chrysostom includes what he calls a Zoroastrian myth (though it looks, to the trained eye, rather Stoic)52 in his Borysthenic oration (36.40–54); and Plutarch’s On Isis and Osiris develops a reading of Egyptian theology that embodies nicely his own Platonist philosophy. What we see in both positions, the purist and the exoticist, is a metaphilosophical concern to narrativise philosophy. Philosophising is not just an abstract intellectual practice; it also, necessarily, invites the individual to position him- or herself within a wider web of debates. Where does philosophy come from? How definitively Greek is it? What does our response to these questions tell us about ourselves? It is tempting to evaluate ‘purists’ like Diogenes and ‘hybridists’ like Numenius in cultural-political terms. Thus Festugi`ere, in his influential and (in many ways) brilliant La R´ev´elation d’Herm`es Trism´egiste, presents the turn to alien wisdom as a failure of Hellenism, symptomatic of a general collapse of Greek values.53 Modern readers, by way of contrast, may think of Stuart Hall’s distinction between conservative narratives of tradition and pluralist narratives of cultural ‘translation’ and hybridity.54 Certainly, this knot of concerns over the cultural value of knowledge needs to be located against the backdrop of the enormous, varied empire, with its slick lines of communication and trade routes: the experience of ‘globalisation’ induces both a heightened awareness of what is shared between cultures and an increased desire to insist on singularity. Yet it would be na¨ıve to see the matter in simple terms of a battle between conservatives (or cultural fundamentalists) and multiculturalists. Both strategies are, ultimately, attempts to encapsulate the global-imperial status of philosophy, and both are centrally concerned to explore the role of Greekness in the modern world. Even Numenius’ apparent degradation of Plato is also an implicit argument for the capaciousness and adaptability of Greek philosophy; it is, after all, the form that he has chosen to express himself in. Was the Latin language capable of accommodating philosophy? The intellectual relationship of Rome to Greece was, broadly, that of scribal culture to reference culture: Greece was conceived of as the originator of 52 53 54

de Jong (2003). Festugi`ere (1944–54); the book evinces a tangible sense of anxiety about cultural loss, perhaps not surprisingly given its publication date. Hall (1992).

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ideas, Rome as the translator and interpreter. Though marked as a relative latecomer, Roman culture could nevertheless adopt a range of strategies in relation to Greek philosophy. Lucretius, who in the first century bce rendered Epicurean philosophy into Latin hexameters, famously protests the ‘poverty’ of his native tongue in relation to the task in hand (On the nature of things 1.136–9) – but still, of course, produces one of the most linguistically adventurous and adept poems of antiquity. Lucretius’ contemporary Cicero, on the other hand, argues that Rome can now overtake Greece in this field (Tusculan disputations 1.5–6). Both writers confront the paradox later to be articulated so famously – in elegant, Hellenising hexameters – by Virgil’s Anchises that Romans should leave the arts to others, and focus on imperium (Aeneid 6.851–2).55 Latin philosophy, however, could and did exist in mature and confident forms, particularly in the post-Ciceronian tradition: in the first century ce, we find, among others, the younger Seneca writing Stoic works On anger, On clemency and on numerous other topics; in the calmer second century, Apuleius could ruminate philosophically in Latin in north Africa, and Aulus Gellius in Athens. Even so, each of these writers, in different ways, manifests an anxiety, or at least a negotiation, of Greek influence. The most extreme case is perhaps that of Apuleius, whose philosophical works vary from creative studies of Greek thinkers (principally Socrates and Plato) through to translations (a lost version of Plato’s Phaedo and – if it is genuinely Apuleian – an extant rendering of the pseudo-Aristotelian On the cosmos). It is remarkable, however, how little canonical authority Latin philosophy achieved in the first three centuries ce (in marked contrast to later, Christian antiquity, when Latin philosophers and theologians were the intellectual colossi of the day). Roman philosophers did not have significant acolytes, nor were their books translated or commented on. The reasons for this should be sought in the ancient practice of the division of intellectual labour into cultural ‘zones’. For elite Romans, philosophy was a sophisticated, but on occasion dangerously unRoman, pastime that could safely be practised only in the circumscribed leisure zone of a rural retreat or a day off from the business of empire. Through the early empire, this strict separation between (Greek) philosophy and the proper (Roman) activity of imperial management became all the more pronounced. The one exception is a telling one: in the field of law alone – that most pragmatic and politicised of intellectual disciplines – Greeks ceded conceptual mastery to Rome.56 55

See further Petrochilos (1974) 58–62.

56

See Millar (1999), esp. 105.

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The best-known philosophers at Rome in the first century ce were thought of, in general, as either opponents of or advisors to the emperor; either way, the allocation of roles emphasised the differential between philosophy and power.57 Despite sporadic appearances of Latin philosophy, Greek was almost always (in the pagan era) considered the appropriate language for philosophy. The first-century Romano-Etruscan knight Musonius Rufus turned to Greek to express his Stoic thoughts.58 The second-century Romano-Gallic knight Favorinus also chose Greek (though he could discourse with equal competence in Latin).59 The most prodigious example is that of the emperor himself, Marcus Aurelius, who chose to write the work of Stoic philosophy we call the Meditations in Greek – a work composed, so he claims, for his own benefit alone. Marcus effectively united the roles of Roman emperor and Greek adviser within a single persona.60 cosmic knowledg e This tension between philosophy as a specifically Greek cultural signifier and its ambitions to a cosmic, supraparochial knowledge is exemplified most powerfully in the aspiration to what is conventionally called ‘cosmopolitanism’, a philosophy that has its roots in Hellenistic Cynicism and Stoicism but takes root in a number of Imperial genres.61 In particular, the exilic discourses of Musonius Rufus, Dio, Plutarch and Favorinus point to a new intensification of concerns.62 For these writers, the fact of penal exile stimulates reflection upon the limitations placed upon knowledge and understanding by family, community, city and state. State persecution thus becomes a rite of passage, an opening to a new, more intense knowledge of the structure of nature, the world, the cosmos. As Musonius puts it, Why should anyone who is not devoid of understanding be grieved by exile? It does not deprive us of water, earth, air, or the sun and the other planets, or indeed, even of the society of men, for everywhere and in every way there is opportunity for association with them. (fr.9 = p. 41 Hense)

Empires of philosophical knowledge are evidently constructed to vie with, even outdo, the scale of the quasi-global Roman empire: to philosophise is to control, at least epistemologically, a territorial space that 57 59 60 61

58 Geytenbeek (1963). Opposition: Macmullen (1992); Rudich (1993); advice: Rawson (1989). See most recently Holford-Strevens (2003) 98–144, with 118–29 on his use of Latin. See Whitmarsh (2001) 216–25, with further references. 62 Whitmarsh (2001) 133–80. Baldry (1965); Stanton (1968); Schofield (1991) 57–92; Moles (1993).

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exceeds the boundaries of mere political space.63 This theme is played out to brilliant effect in Philostratus’ In honour of Apollonius Tyana, where the philosopher’s travels pointedly take him beyond the outer limits of Roman imperial control, and indeed Macedonian conquest.64 In the eastern voyage of the early books (a voyage he conceptualised in terms of ‘border-crossing’, 1.18), Apollonius passes through a succession of boundaries symbolically marking the journey into the unknown. At the ‘borders’ of Babylonia – in both Apollonius’ and Philostratus’ time, the nerve centre of the defiant Parthian empire – he meets a frontier control (1.21). Indeed, the narrative itself is organised around the theme of border-crossing. At the end of the first book, Apollonius resolves to leave Babylon; at the beginning of the second book, Philostratus refers to the Caucasus as the ‘beginning’ of the Taurus (2.1–2). At the end of the second book, Apollonius reaches a column inscribed ‘Alexander got this far’ which Philostratus supposes to have been erected either by Alexander to mark the ‘limit’ of his empire, or by the Indians out of pride that he ‘got no further’ (2.43). The words ‘got no further’ close book 2, so that Alexander’s column also marks the end of a book. For Greek readers, the next book travels into the radical unknown; and it is significant that book 3 begins with a description of the wonders of India: the river Hyphasis, and extraordinary trees, fish, worms and wild asses, pepper trees and dragons (3.1–9). Philostratus offers a compendium of knowledge that takes its readers beyond the confines of Greco-Roman political, military and epistemological control. Apollonius’ knowledge is predicated on his grasp of ‘the world’ in all its polymorphous variety.65 The Brahmans, the sages of India who teach him, realise that true wisdom lies in understanding not ‘the parts of the cosmos’ but ‘the intelligence that lies in it’ (
   3.34). Greek philosophy – not only Apollonius’, but also of course the reader’s inherited paradigm – is said by the Indians to be insufficient (3.18, 3.27; cf. 2.29). Yet as ever, the tyranny of Hellenocentrism is not so much overthrown as subtly reconfigured. Indian wisdom does turn out to be suspiciously familiar: in terms of kingship theory (2.26–9), the Brahmans are broadly Platonist; in terms of cosmology, broadly Stoic (3.34–5);66 in terms of communist utopianism, broadly Cynic.67 Meanwhile, we find the Indian king 63 65 66 67

64 See further Elsner (1997). Nicolet (1991). For the proclaimed unity of the world, see 1.15, 1.21, 6.2 (   ! "), 8.5, 8.7(iv). For !# and  in Stoicism see Long and Sedley (1987) 46B, 47 (though the Indians have an extra element (!#)). Cf. the Spartanising $  %  (3.27), with Dawson (1992) 28; cf. Onesicritus at FGrH 134 F20. For Indian gymnosophists (as the Brahmans are usually called, though Philostratus locates his gymnosophists in Egypt) as Cynics, see Muckensturm (1993).

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Phraotes reading Euripides (2.32), Greek-speaking locals (3.12), statues of Greek gods (3.13), and a whole series of assimilative comparisons between Greek and Indian buildings and city structures (2.20, 2.23, 2.27, 3.13). Greek wisdom does not evaporate in this text, rather it expands to colonise all other knowledge systems: ‘to the wise man’, Apollonius famously comments, ‘everything is Greek’ (1.35). Apollonius’ cosmic knowledge extends effortlessly beyond the realms of mortal empire. princely knowledg e The empire of knowledge did not have to vie directly with the political empire of Rome; it could also serve it, as we saw a moment ago in the role of philosophical advisor. The emperor and his servants employed battalions of experts and scholars. For these individuals, the figure of the emperor loomed large: partly because emperors were often patrons of scientific and literary endeavour, and because the adminstrators and technicians of imperial power were always ultimately answerable to the emperor himself; but also for the less immediately tangible reason that ideas of writerly authority and ambition were often explored through and against the image of imperial control. How much did the emperors of Rome themselves know, or need to know? In some cases it seems that a particular emperor’s choice of which kinds of knowledge to patronise could be used – either by the emperor himself or by those who wrote about him – as an index of his most distinctive characteristics.68 In Suetonius’ biography of Claudius, for example, the emperor chooses historical knowledge, leaving behind him an enormous history of Rome in many volumes, begun in his youth with the encouragement of the historian Livy.69 The most distinctive feature of this history, however, is its incompleteness, the result of continual badgering by his mother and grandmother, who persuade him to leave out sensitive topics from recent history. In Suetonius’ account, Claudius’ failure to match the exhaustive historical ambitions of his mentor, Livy, is used as a sign of his lack of independence, which is a dominant theme of the biography as a whole.70 Nero, by contrast, chooses performance expertise, in his increasingly obsessive interest in Greek musical competition, as Suetonius again makes clear.71 Marcus 68 69

70

Cf. Woolf (1994) 135 on selective appropriations of Greek culture by successive emperors. Suet. Claud. 41. See also Wallace-Hadrill (1983) 72–96 on the fact that Suetonius’ own career as a ‘scholar at court’ was itself in part a result of imperial patronage of scholarship on the part of Trajan and Hadrian, a good example of imperial patronage of a particular type of knowledge. 71 See esp. Suet. Ner. 20–25 and 41–3, with Edwards (1993) 135–6. See esp. Suet. Claud. 29.

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Aurelius, as his own writings testify, chooses philosophical self-knowledge above everything. Elsewhere, by contrast, we find the assumption that the emperor should know everything. Suetonius’ Augustus, for example, is characterised by his ability to focus on many different areas of government simultaneously.72 Nero, by contrast, at least on Suetonius’ account, falls short of that ideal through the narrowness of his concentration on musical skill, which leads him to neglect the military crises which are brewing all around him.73 To some extent that image of imperial omniscience is grounded in administrative reality, given what we know of the involvement of emperors in hearing judicial appeals and diplomatic embassies from across the Mediterranean world – although this ideal of the emperor as ubiquitous was itself a carefully orchestrated one, not least through the omnipresence of imperial statues and inscriptions.74 It was also an ideal that must have relied in practice on a massive exercise of delegation, a sharing of expertise between many different specialists. Texts dedicated to emperors often reflect that process of jostling for position between rival specialisms keen to gain imperial favour. The idea of interrelation between author’s knowledge and emperor’s needs is manipulated in a range of different ways. Often the precise specialism of the author is represented as the thing the emperor most needs to know. That trope casts the author as subordinate, but also allows him (it is always ‘him’) to claim a kind of patriotic usefulness for his own writing, and sometimes also to equate his own compilatory ambitions with the emperor’s territorial and administrative grasp.75 Some authors even take on the imagery of imperial omniscience, applying it to their own wide-ranging erudition. In this volume, for example, Alice K¨onig examines the imperial dedications of Frontinus and Vitruvius. For Vitruvius, she suggests, architecture lies at the heart of empire; it is also equivalent to the constructive political skills of the emperor Augustus. Frontinus uses the same words – ‘diligent’ and ‘loving’ – to describe both himself, in his care of the aqueduct system of Rome, and the Emperor Nerva. Again, Maecianus’ metrological treatise, addressed to Marcus Aurelius, explores (as Serafina Cuomo’s chapter shows) connections between standardisation of measures and the establishment of political order. That 72

73 75

For just one example, see Suet. Aug. 33 on Augustus’ painstaking personal involvement in the administration of justice; and cf. Wallace-Hadrill (1983) 119–25 on Suetonius’ awareness of the wide range of areas covered by imperial administration and his tendency to value personal participation of emperors in them. 74 Ando (2000), esp. 206–73, on images of emperor and of empire. Cf. K¨onig (2005) 229–33. See esp. Murphy (2004), esp. 203–9, on Pliny’s manipulation of the image of Titus’ imperial authority in the HN.

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strategy can in some cases take on subversive overtones. Petronius’ Satyrica, as Victoria Rimell argues in her chapter in this volume, has no sign of any specific reference to the emperor, but it too is daringly parasitic upon the tropes of imperial self-presentation, grounding its grotesque vision of excessive knowledge in the image of Neronian over-consumption. k n owled ge, social status and cultural affiliation What you know says a great deal about who you are. Knowledge is intimately tied up with social self-positioning. In the east of the empire, for example, mastery of abstruse rhetorical and literary knowledge was widely associated with social distinction.76 Socially empowering rhetorical expertise – publicised in its most extravagant form in the display speeches of sophists in front of huge audiences – was not only about intellectual agility, although there are certainly numerous handbooks on matters of style, grammar and rhetoric surviving from the period;77 it was also embodied, displayed through posture and gesture and style of voice as much as through words, absorbed and learned and constantly reperformed within the encounters of everyday interaction and repetitive training.78 In that sense, sophistic skill was simply a more intense form of the skills of social self-presentation which all elite men (women too – though there is less sense in ancient sources of female identities being forged within the rhythms of public display)79 had to learn. 76

77

78 79

See esp. Schmitz (1997). A huge body of technical rhetorical writing existed in the imperial period, encompassing, e.g., works by (in Greek) Valerius Apsines of Gadara (3rd cent. ce), Aelius Aristides (2nd cent. ce), Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1st cent. bce–1st cent. ce), Hermogenes of Tarsus (2nd– 3rd cent. ce), Aelius Herodian of Alexandria (2nd cent. ce), Lesbonax (2nd cent. ce), Dionysius Cassius Longinus of Athens or Palmyra (3rd cent. ce), Menander ‘rhetor’ of Laodicea (3rd–4th cent. ce), Minucianus the younger of Athens (3rd cent. ce), Aelius Theon of Alexandria (1st–2nd cent. ce), Tiberius (3rd ce?), Potamon of Mytilene (1st cent. bce–1st cent. ce), as well as the ‘Anonymous Seguerianus’ (3rd ce); and in Latin, by Rutilius Lupus (1st cent. ce), Suetonius and Tacitus. See Kaster (1988); Swain (1996), 43–64. For rhetorical works, see previous n.; for lexicographical works, see below, n. 92. Grammatical works in Greek are transmitted or attested by, e.g., Ammonius (1st–2nd cent. ce), Apollonius ‘Dyscolus’ of Alexandria (2nd cent. ce), Aristonicus of Alexandria (1st cent. bce–1st ce), Hephaestion of Alexandria (2nd cent. ce), Heraclides of Miletus (1st–2nd cent. ce), Herennius (or Eranius) Philo of Byblis (1st–2nd cent. ce), Aelius Herodian of Alexandria (2nd cent. ce), Lesbonax (2nd cent. ce), Nicanor of Alexandria (2nd cent. ce), Polybius of Sardis (2nd cent. ce?), Telephus of Pergamum (2nd cent. ce), Theon of Alexandria (1st cent. bce–1st cent. ce), and Tyrannion the younger or Diocles (1st cent. bce–1st cent. ce); in Latin, by Flavius Caper (2nd cent. ce), Censorinus (3rd cent. ce), Verrius Flaccus (1st cent. ce), Fronto and Velius Longus (2nd cent. ce). See Gleason (1995); Whitmarsh (2005a) 23–34. One female rhetorician, Aufria, is recorded at Delphi in an inscription of the second century ce: see Puech (2002) 156–7. In general on female education see Hemelrijk (2004).

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Nor is that concept of knowledge as bodily practice confined to the Greek part of the empire; Thomas Habinek, for example, shows in this volume how a vision of knowledge as embodied experience structures Manilius’ Astronomica. Those patterns exemplify strikingly Bourdieu’s notion of social knowledge as something formed through the repetitions of everyday life, experienced bodily as well as intellectually.80 Many of the encyclopedic and scientific texts we examine here at first sight seem far removed from the bodily experience of knowledge, in their dry and disordered surfaces. And yet if we surrender ourselves to the repetitive patterns of these texts we can perhaps begin to see how they mirror the processes by which social knowledge is acquired, offering their readers a cumulative experience of knowledge, gradually imprinting the grooves of knowledge on to the reader’s mind through their relentlessly recurring yet endlessly varying rhythms.81 We find similar social pressures within late-Republican and earlyImperial Rome. Here – as within Greek tradition – manual work and specialised, technical knowledge were generally represented as unsuitable for men and women of high status; while certain other forms of expertise – military, rhetorical, agricultural – were more highly prized, though never unequivocally so.82 Moreover, the social acceptability or otherwise of a particular body of knowledge was often linked with its perceived cultural affiliations. Social status and gestures of cultural affiliation were closely intertwined with each other, although the precise nature of these links was constantly open to restatement and reperformance. Greek knowledge in some forms was treated with suspicion – philosophy or astrology, for example, whose reputation for subversive potential, leading to sporadic banishments of philosophers and astrologers by successive emperors, was partly linked with its Hellenic associations.83 But in other forms it held social cachet. Elite Romans had to tread a delicate balance between excessive devotion to Greek knowledge and ignorance of it (as we have seen 80 81 82 83

See esp. Bourdieu (1977); cf. Crick (1982) 300 on embodied knowledge. E.g., see Jacob (2001) on the painstaking, repeated practices of quoting, filtering and juxtaposing, by which Athenaeus’ Sophists at dinner draw meaning from the Hellenic literary heritage. See Rawson (1985) for exhaustive discussion of the status map of Roman Republican disciplines. On the ambiguous relationship between astrology and imperial power, see Barton (1994a) 32–63 and (1994b) 27–94. Astrological and astronomical texts from the period are numerous: e.g. (in Greek) Achilles Tatius (2nd cent. ce), On the sphere; Apollonius of Tyana (1st cent. ce), Celestial influence; Cleomedes (2nd cent. ce), On the circular motion of the heavenly bodies; Dorotheus of Sidon (1st cent. bce-1st cent. ce), various astrological works; Manetho (3rd ce), Celestial influence; Maximus (2nd cent. ce?), On forecasts; Claudius Ptolemy (2nd cent. ce), Celestial influence; Teucer of Babylon or Egypt (1st cent. ce) On the zodiac and On the seven stars; Thrasyllus of Alexandria (1st cent. ce), a work on astrology; Vettius Valens (2nd cent. ce), Anthology; in Latin, Apuleius (2nd cent. ce), Astronomy; Germanicus Caesar (1st cent. ce), Prognostications, Celestial phenomena; Hyginus (2nd cent. ce), Astronomy; Manilius (1st cent. ce), Astronomy.

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already for Greek philosophy).84 These considerations continued to exercise a powerful influence well into the Imperial period, and many texts continued to advertise the distinctive Romanness of their own reconfigurations of the Greek systematising project. The recurrent attraction of agriculture as a subject for Roman knowledgeorderers is a good example. Columella, for example, writing in the first century ce, knows and discusses at length Greek traditions of writing on agriculture,85 but he also goes out of his way to mark the Romanness of his text throughout his preface, for example by representing his own project as an attempt to reinvigorate the productiveness of Italian farmland, and by looking back to the hardy stock of Romulus who tilled the fields in the beginnings of Roman history. For Columella, advertising one’s relation with the myths of early Roman frugality and self-sufficiency, and with the rigours of specifically Roman erudition, is an essential authorising gesture for wealthy, landed, elite status in the present (a gesture which is parodied in Petronius’ portrayal of Trimalchio’s self-sufficiency (Sat. 37–8) – not the self-sufficiency of the stereotypically modest Roman market-gardener, but rather of the man who produces everything he could desire on his own massive estates).86 disciplinary know l edge Unwritten social rules, however, are notoriously unstable. The hierarchy of disciplines was constantly being restated and refashioned. Changes in political climate and in administrative conventions led to changes in the prestige of specific groups of practitioners. For example, the increasing popularity – and, at times, official disapproval – of astrology in Rome from the late first century bce onwards has conventionally been explained by the fact that it thrived on making predictions related to powerful political figures, and to Augustus’ exploitation of that focus (although Thomas Habinek’s chapter in this volume nuances that explanation).87 Under the Flavians the backlash against empowerment of freedmen employed by the Julio-Claudians made it increasingly common for senators to be given administrative posts, and prompted reformulation of conventional senatorial antipathies towards applied knowledge.88 84 85

86 88

See pp. 16–18, above and, e.g., Gruen (1993). See esp. Columella Rust. 1.1.7–11, and Henderson (2004). Other agricultural texts of the period include, e.g., Apuleius (2nd cent. ce), On rustic matters; Columella, On trees; Siculus Flaccus (2nd cent. ce), On the status of fields; Julius Graecinus (2nd cent. ce), On vines. 87 See Barton (1994a), esp. 38–49. See Garnsey (1999) 23–4. See Talbert (1984), with 15–16 and 134 on Vespasian’s adlection of new senators; and 372–407 for senatorial duties.

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Other changes were less clearly anchored in specific institutional adjustments, but not for that reason any less firmly grounded in political reality. It is clear, for example, that some bodies of Greek knowledge (e.g., medicine, siegecraft, geography) were widely appropriated and adapted within Rome, while others (e.g., philology, literary criticism) were relatively neglected. Those variations in treatment of Greek intellectual material were partly a result of struggles for political and cultural authority within the Roman elite, where choices about which resources to exploit and which not were always determined in part by strategic aims.89 Similar considerations seem to have shaped shifting attitudes towards traditionally Roman forms of expertise and cultural authority. On one argument, for example, the first century bce saw an erosion of the link between historical/religious knowledge and political authority within Rome, at a time when appeals to the past history of individual families were losing their moral authority, in the turmoil of civil war. That shift was then manipulated by Augustus and his successors by bringing antiquarian experts – who no longer tended to come from the politically active elite – under direct imperial control, thus creating a new vision of universalising knowledge, where political authority was based on delegation of knowledge rather than possession of it.90 Whatever the virtues of that model in its precise details, it is important for its attempts to ground changing conceptions and textual manifestations of Roman knowledge materially in the continually evolving struggles for elite prestige and authority. Much of this shifting landscape of disciplinary self-presentation was also due to the fact that the Roman Empire – unlike the modern world – had few explicit professional qualifications, institutional structures for controlling and guaranteeing expertise. That situation led to heavy reliance on rhetorical means of self-legitimation, developed within a system where experts had to compete for adherents and clients.91 For that reason we often see knowledge-ordering writers jostling for position against their rivals. Galen, for example, argues in his Protrepticus for a separation between good arts and bad arts; and then subdivides the former category, listing medicine as the best art of all (Protrepticus 14).92 Galen’s equation of medicine with philosophy – both there and elsewhere (most obviously in That the best doctor is also a philosopher) – allows him to separate his own expertise not only from other disciplines, but also from the activity of those he represents as more disreputable and incompetent claimants to medical knowledge, whose expertise is not worthy of that label. Philostratus responds to that 89 91

See Wallace-Hadrill (1988). See Lloyd (1979) 86–98.

92

90 See Wallace-Hadrill (1997). See K¨onig (2005) 291–300.

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scheme in his Gymnasticus by downgrading medicine, praising instead the – socially marginal – art of athletic training which had been one of Galen’s main targets.93 That is not to say that we should equate these kinds of disciplinary selfdefinition with the sharp disciplinary divides with which we are familiar in the modern world. It was standard for learned people to write treatises on a broad range of topics. The common habit of addressing works to private recipients, and that of drawing attention to one’s own reluctance to publish, together contribute to an impression of the absence of rigid disciplinary boundaries. There were also pressures towards totalising knowledge for ancient writers, pressures to integrate different bodies of thought into a single system, ‘metaphilosophical’ or otherwise. Strabo, for example, represents his combination of geographical and historical knowledge as a kind of philosophy, grounded in Stoic assumptions that the cosmos is a unified body whose disparate parts are held together by a single binding force.94 Galen – as Rebecca Flemming shows in her chapter – takes a more Platonic view, seeing the workings of divine order within the order of the human body, and drawing on many different areas of expertise – natural-historical, philosophical, philological – to convey that vision throughout his voluminous oeuvre.95 And yet despite all of these attempts to harmonise different bodies of knowledge, it is also clear – not least in the example just quoted from Galen’s Protrepticus – that the gesture of equating one’s own expertise with the overarching label of philosophical expertise could often serve partisan aims. This distinction between different disciplines is important partly just because it reminds us of the dangers of characterising knowledge systems of the Roman Empire as monolithic entities, even though that is a characterisation these texts themselves often construct rhetorically (as we have already seen above96 for the all-embracing nature of philosophical selfdefinition). Moreover, we need to recognise not only that different bodies of knowledge were formed very differently through battles for political and social authority, but also that they in turn fed diverse models and impulses of social and political interaction back into the cultures that produced them. Not all disciplines created the same kinds of social positions for the human subjects and objects of their practice. Medicine, as it was both practised and theorised, offered distinctive visions of the human body and of 93 94 95

See K¨onig (2005) 315–25. See French (1994) 123–30; Clarke (1999), esp. 216; cf. 185–90 on similar conceptions in the geographical work of Posidonius. 96 Pp. 13–20. See Hankinson (1988).

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human subjectivity, both male and female, distinctive roles for doctors and patients alike to inhabit;97 the increasingly systematised body of Roman law did the same;98 and the repetitive techniques of Roman declamation, as they are revealed to us in surviving treatises of rhetorical exercises, had encoded within them particular visions of the social and gender hierarchies of Roman society.99 All of these disciplines were very different from each other in the experiences of knowledge they offered (as well as being differently experienced in different contexts), though all of them also reflected and contributed in interlocking ways to the overarching power relations of Greco-Roman society. the world in the text The discussion so far prompts wider synchronic reflections on the nature of textuality and authorship in the period. We have advanced strong claims for the interrelationship between varieties of the ordering of knowledge and of the ordering of empire. But what of the presentation of material within texts, and within those social institutions that allow for the reception and circulation of texts? As Foucault argues in a well-known essay, the ‘author function’ is historically variable, to the effect that different forces (ideological, political, cultural, economic) shape the way that textual significance and textual ownership are imagined in different periods.100 Should we expect to see the empire of knowledge mirrored in the mini-empires of textual ordering? 97

98

99 100

See Flemming (2000) on medical visions of the female body, and more broadly Barton (1994b). Medical authors in the period, in addition to Galen, are numerous: works transmitted or known include, e.g., in Greek, Aglais of Byzantium (1st cent. ce?), On cataracts; Antyllus (2nd cent. ce), On enemas; Archigenes of Apamea (1st–2nd cent. ce), various; Aretaeus (2nd cent. ce), various; Cassius (2nd–3rd cent. ce), Medical questions and other works; Titus Statilius Crito of Heracleia (1st–2nd cent. ce), On cosmetics and On the composition of drugs; Dioscorides ‘Pedianus’ (1st ce), various; Marcellinus (2nd cent. ce), On pulses; Philo of Tarsus (1st–2nd cent. ce), a medical poem; Plutarch of Chaeroneia (1st–2nd cent. ce), Precepts for good health; Rufus of Ephesus (1st–2nd cent. ce), various; Severus (1st cent. ce), On cauterisation; Soranus of Ephesus (1st–2nd cent. ce), various; in Latin, Celsus (1st cent. ce), On medicine; Scribonius Largus (1st cent. ce), Prescriptions. A massive and tangled corpus of Roman jurisprudential material survives from the period. The most important works are: Gaius (2nd cent. ce), Institutes and other works; Lucius Volusius Maecianus (2nd cent. ce), various legal and other works (see further Cuomo in this volume); Aelius Marcianus (3rd cent. ce), Institutes and other works; Masurius Sabinus (1st cent. ce), several jurisprudential works; Domitius Ulpian (3rd ce), Institutes and other works. Harries (1999) offers many suggestive insights into the ways in which late-antique legal convention influenced and was influenced by conceptualisations of authority in other areas of public and private life. See especially the elder Seneca’s Utterances, categories and techniques of the orators, with Bloomer (1997); Dupont (1997); Gunderson (2003). For other rhetorical works, see above, n. 73. Foucault (1986). See further Whitmarsh (2004) 8–9.

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Can we see, for example, a shift of emphasis from ‘work’ to ‘text’? A ‘work’, on this interpretation (mimicking Roland Barthes),101 would be an apparatus of signs viewed principally as the manifestation of the author’s privileged intelligence; a ‘text’, on the other hand, would be a resource made available for the reader. Clearly, any such historical shift would be supported by the (self-diagnosed) domination of prose over verse in this period:102 there is no expectation of ‘inspiration’ attached to technical prose. Texts like Frontinus’ On aqueducts, Artemidorus’ The interpretation of dreams, Apollodorus’ Library, Polemo’s Physiognomics, Aelian’s On the nature of animals, Ampelius’ Book of memory, Pollux’s Onomasticon or Ulpian’s Digest are self-consciously utilitarian, anticipating a reader who consults judiciously rather than capitulating to the linear textual narrative. Of course, at another level, each of these texts is a virtuoso authorial performance of mastery in the spheres of research, synthesis and exposition. It is not that the author recedes in such texts, more that the role of the author is reconceived: new virtues are located in the arts of editing and the organisation of pre-existing units of knowledge. We can identify this phenomenon across a range of cases, from the Hellenistic period onwards, but with particular intensity in the Roman period. Nor is this process confined to the enormous range of massive, synthetic texts alluded to in the previous paragraph. Philosophers’ words were edited by their disciples, playing Plato/Xenophon to their teachers’ Socrates (the most prominent cases are those of Lucius/Musonius Rufus and Arrian/Epictetus). Philostratus’ In honour of Apollonius of Tyana, a text that we have already considered, represents itself as the result of the ‘rewriting’ ("! &) for imperial consumption of the memoirs of Damis, synthesised with the works of Moeragenes and Maximus of Aegeae (1.2–3). Labour could profitably be invested in ordering the books of intellectual avatars: Porphyry, for example, edited and arranged Plotinus’ books (the full title of his biography is On the life of Porphyry and the order of his books).103 The self-regarding Galen, indeed, even wrote On the order of my own books. In the sphere of poetry, ‘garlands’ of short poems by established authors were collected by such figures as Meleager (in the first century bce) and (in the first century ce) Philip. It is as though the world of knowledge was now fully bounded and all that remained was to debate its arrangement.

101 103

102 Whitmarsh (2005b). Barthes (1986). Porphyry’s catalogue of Plotinian book titles is discussed at Nachmanson (1941) 26–7.

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This is a period that also sees a profusion of works of commentary and (particularly in Latin) of translation, epitomisation and summary.104 What is extraordinary in these cases is that we almost always know the identity of the commentator, translator, epitomiser or summariser in question: thus, for example, Julius Florus is known as the epitomiser of Livy, Justinus as the author of the Prologues of Trogus’ Philippic histories, Sulpicius Apollinaris as the author of verse summaries of Virgil’s Aeneid and Terence’s plays.105 The reconfiguration of pre-existing texts is viewed not simply as second-order intellectual parasitism, but as a major intellectual project in its own right. This, of course, is not per se new: after all, the traditional founder of Latin literature (Livius Andronicus) was a translator from the Greek. The crucial point, however, is to note the rich, thick context in which this imperial literary production was appearing. This was not a secondary culture held in thrall to its originating predecessors (as older scholars, preoccupied with the romantic ideal of creative originality, sometimes assumed): it was rather an imperial power mapping and colonising the enormous expanse of preexisting knowledge. From the time of Trajan onwards, the boundaries of the Roman Empire were not significantly expanded; likewise, the textual world was conceived of as sufficient and fully formed. Inevitably, counterexamples can be advanced.106 In the field of geography, exotic new parts were being discovered at the margins of the world: this sense of excitement at the discovery of new spaces feeds both the burgeoning genre of periplous (‘circumnavigation’) literature107 and other travel-narrative forms, such as the novel.108 Yet the exceptions prove the rule: that new discoveries were consigned to the exotic margins of the world is an indication of the epistemological exhaustion of the Empire. The fantastical 104 105

106

107

108

See appendix for full details. For bilingualism in the period, see Adams, Janse and Swain (eds.) (2002), and Adams (2003). Cf., e.g., Apuleius’ (2nd cent. ce) translations (noted above) of Plato’s Phaedo and (though authorship is debated) Aristotle’s On the universe, and also a verse translation from Menander; Quintus Asconius Pedianus’ (1st cent. ce) commentaries on Cicero’s orations; Baebius Italicus’ (1st cent. ce) epitome of Homer’s Iliad in Latin; Germanicus Caesar’s (1st cent. ce) translation of Aratus’ Celestial phenomena; Marcus Cetius Faventinus’ (3rd cent. ce) epitome of Vitruvius’ On architecture; Sextus Pompeius Festus’ (2nd cent. ce) epitome of Verrius Flaccus’ On the meaning of words; ‘Septimius’’ (3rd ce?) translation of Dictys of Crete’s Journal of the Trojan war. The ‘Arguments’ (2nd cent. ce) for Plautus’ plays, on the other hand, are anonymous. Arrian’s book on hunting with dogs, for example, stakes its claim to surpass Xenophon precisely on the superior knowledge of dog breeds available to the later author: full discussion at Stadter (1980) 53–4. Cf. the anonymous Circumnavigation of the Red Sea (2nd cent. ce) and Circumnavigation of the Great Sea (3nd cent. ce), Arrian’s Circumnavigation of the Black Sea, Dionysius of Byzantium’s (2nd cent. ce) Navigation up the Bosporus. Especially Lucian’s True stories and Antonius Diogenes’ Wonders beyond Thule: see Romm (1991) 172–214.

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invention of new places to visit plays the same imaginary role as a dream that one discovers a new room in one’s house: the thrill of the new derives in part from the familiar structures of the established. What we are proposing is that the period of the first three centuries of the Roman Empire saw a large-scale shift in the perception of intellectual labour: the fact of empire crucially changed the way in which knowledge was used, abused, presented, represented. In his classic discussion The Archaeology of Knowledge, Michel Foucault proposes the idea of ‘the archive’ as a historical phenomenon (with roots, he argues, in the eighteenth century) that enables a certain way of understanding language and its relationship to the world: not simply the physical institutions that store and disseminate knowledge, but an entire ‘system of discursivity’: The archive is first the law of what can be said, the system that governs the appearance of statements as unique events. But the archive is also that which determines that all these things said do not accumulate endlessly in an amorphous mass, nor are they inscribed in an unbroken linearity, nor do they disappear at the mercy of chance external accidents; but they are grouped together in distinct figures, composed together in accordance with multiple relations, maintained or blurred in accordance with specific regularities.109

For Foucault – here in characteristically oracular mode – ’the archive’ is a ‘historical a priori’, a dynamic force that drives all intellectual production within a period. This is clearly both overstated and undernuanced: societies are more fractured and embattled than Foucault allows (and indeed later writings such as La volont´e du savoir reflect his increasing awareness of precisely this point). We might also question the validity of construing the archive as an ‘a priori’ cause that has (apparently) only limited, localised negotiability:110 surely there is no single system that ‘governs’ or ‘determines’ (to use Foucault’s phraseology) thought, without itself becoming subject to immediate and radical revision. Still, the archive – as a habit of thought, an intellectual genre, an interrelated set of culturally operative, but also embattled, propositions as to the necessary properties and social roles of language – provides a useful model for conceptualising the order of knowledge. Though Foucault seeks to explicate a much later period, archival thinking can be detected behind a range of textual practices in the Roman Empire, where (as we have seen) the desire to itemise and order knowledge reaches a new peak of intensity. 109

Foucault (1972) 129.

110

Ibid. 127.

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ord er in d iversit y How can diverse objects of knowledge be synthesised into a single textual form? Common terms like ‘miscellany’, used particularly of texts like Pamphila’s Collection of historical reminiscences, Favorinus’ Miscellaneous history, Aulus Gellius’ Attic nights and Aelian’s Miscellaneous history, give the impression of a random aggregration of unconnected phenomena.111 And indeed the texts themselves often foster that impression. According to Photius (Library 119b), Pamphila claimed to have compiled her work ‘at random, as each thing came to her’ (!'  $ ( )!). But this kind of claim should not be taken as evidence for incompetence: Photius goes on to report her assertion that it would have been easy to structure her work by topic (* !+), but more pleasant (! ,!  . . .   ,! ) to present a polymorphous variety. Miscellanism was a conscious, deliberate and motivated choice for Pamphila. This example should warn us against taking the semblance (and indeed the protestation) of randomness too literally. There was a knowing, controlling intelligence behind Pamphila’s ‘miscellany’ of knowledge, even if too little of the text survives today to be able to judge it.112 The other thing which unifies miscellanistic knowledge, of course, is its openness to being manipulated within specific moments of performance. It is striking that many of the miscellanistic works of the Roman Empire offer themselves as resources to be used – collections of anecdotes or exempla to be reactivated and reshaped by the reader in other contexts. Elsewhere, we see that kind of performance of knowledge in action, for example in representations of sympotic conversation of the kind we find in Plutarch’s Sympotic questions or Macrobius’ Saturnalia, or in many of the dialogues of Aulus Gellius’ Attic nights. But how do we read such diversity when we are confronted with it? What kind of sense can we make from accumulations and lists as we read (as opposed to making sense of them through our own re-use of the anecdotes and facts they offer)? Let us turn, by way of example, to one of 111

112

Other contemporary miscellanies include, e.g., Lucius Ampelius (3rd ce?), Book of memory; Apuleius, Florida; Censorinus (3rd cent. ce), On the birthday; Clement of Alexandria (2nd–3rd cent. ce), Miscellanies; and the pseudepigraphical ‘Fragmentum Censorini’. Earlier works entitled ‘mixtures’ (-"") are known of by Aristoxenus (frr.122–7 Wehrli), Istrus (FGrH 334 F57) and Callistratus ‘the Aristophanean’ (FGrH 348 F2–3). For further discussion of the often disingenuous nature of claims about random composition in miscellanistic texts, see Jason K¨onig’s chapter in this volume; for Pamphila’s knowingness, note her claim (again reported by Photius) to have learned her subject matter from her husband, from visitors and from books: we take this a playful allusion to Ar. Lys. 1125–7.

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the paradigm cases of archival thinking under the empire, Julius Pollux’s Onomasticon (addressed, as we shall shortly discuss, to the Emperor Commodus). The history of ancient lexicography is still largely unwritten – indeed, as John Henderson observes in his chapter, scholarship has largely connived to repress its visibility, while simultaneously exploiting it as a resource – but it seems as though Pollux’s work innovated radically, in that it orders its words rigorously by theme, grouping the themes together into books.113 To that extent, it seems to borrow substantially from the conventions of ‘encyclopedic’ knowledge-orderers like Pliny, who deal with a wide range of different types of expertise in successive sections. Phrynichus’ contemporary Atticist (from which we have an extant Eclogue or ‘selection’), by way of contrast, proceeds by picking its way apparently at random through the many phrases it amasses (though there may be traces of an original alphabetical order). Pollux’s technique is to enter lists of words under broad rubrics. Though the Onomasticon is not the kind of text that many readers will choose to read sequentially, the sequence is in fact crucial: the mapping of language is also an exercise in mapping the hierarchies of the world.114 Let us take an example, the entry under names for girls and women (which, predictably, comes after that for men): In the case of females, the first names, up to paidarion, are the same as for men (for this is common to both, to females and males). From there on: paidisk¯e, korion (which is found in Eupolis’ Goats), kor¯e, koriskion. Korasion is used but it is a mean word, as is koridion. The concrete noun is for the state of a virgin is korikon; but I do not admit this. Phrynichus the comic calls young girls aph¯elikas: ‘there were also aphˆelikes women there’. Pherecrates calls an older woman aph¯elikesteran, just as Cratinus calls an old man aph¯elika. You will also say ‘virgin in the season for marriage’. Aristophanes also says that girls who are of age ‘are ripe as beans’ (kuamizein): 113

114

The text as we have it probably derives from an early epitome by Bishop Arethas in the tenth century, but it is still plenty ample enough to allow for general comments on structure. Lexicography was a vibrant intellectual industry, particularly in the Greek-speaking world: cf., e.g., Apion of Alexandria (1st cent. ce), On Homeric language; Apollonius (1st–2nd cent. ce), Lexicon to Homer; Aelius Dionysius of Halicarnassus (2nd cent. ce – not to be confused with his first-century homonym), Attic words, Erotianus (1st ce) Collection of Hippocratic words; Eudemus of Argos (2nd cent. ce?), On rhetorical language; Galen, Explanation of Hippocrates’ language; Pseudo-Galen (2nd cent. ce?), Names of plants; Harpocration of Alexandria (1st–2nd cent. ce), Lexicon of the ten orators; Herodian of Alexandria (2nd cent. ce), Homeric schematisms; Moeris (2nd–3rd cent. ce), Lexicon of Atticism; Pausanias (2nd cent. ce), Collection of Attic words; Phrynichus ‘the Arab’ (2nd cent. ce), Preparation for sophistry and Selection; Ptolemy of Ascalon (2nd cent. ce?), On the difference between words. There is no comparable field in Latin, although some shared ground is covered by grammatical works. ‘Simple classification is hard to achieve without the imposition of special value judgements like “higher” or “lower”’ (McArthur (1986) 35).

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‘Others of them are ripe as beans, they are now nearly taking wing towards their husbands’. Lass, lassie, unmarried girl, nubile, newly-wed, woman/wife (gun¯e ), woman hitched to a man (¯endr¯omen¯e ), woman fused with a man (andri memigmen¯e ), young girl, girl of age, young woman, girl who has reached her age (aph¯eb¯ekuia), girl who has gone past her age (parh¯eb¯ekuia), one who is inclining towards old age, old woman, and (as in Isaeus) older woman, oldie, and (as in Theopompus the comic) aged woman lover of wine, drunkard, lusting after wine, perineum. The rest are the same as for men, such as on the edge of old age, weighed down with age and so forth. (2.17–18)

This entry is structured (notwithstanding an interlude in the middle) as a progression through a woman’s life, from birth to death. The terms for very young and very old are common to women and men alike. Gender differentiation is presented as a feature of culture, not biology: it only begins when the child begins to be socialised, and ceases to apply in very old age. Maturation (h¯eb¯e ) is closely linked to marriage, which is constructed as the natural goal of female existence. This connection is underlined in the quotation from Aristophanes, which is not necessary for lexical purposes: what it does, for Pollux, is to underscore the leap from the biological (ripening like beans) to the socially programmatic (taking wing towards husbands). But even the lexical point does cultural work: the reference to beans (kuamoi) may well demand comparison with other fruit and vegetable words used by the comedians to describe the firm body of a young girl.115 In other words, the young girl is being presented in salacious, titillating terms, as a definitively embodied being, and available to the touch and control of the male subject. Particularly interesting is the citation from Theopompus that describes the old woman: the quotation is designed, prima facie, to introduce the word presbutis (which I have translated ‘aged woman’), but it brings with it a host of abusive adjectives activating the comic stereotype of the old drunk. These words are lexically superfluous; nor do they complete a metrical line (the quotation is ametric). The concluding word, . , is a medical word for the perineum, also found in the comedians meaning ‘arse’ and (according to Jeffrey Henderson) ‘almost always refers to anal intercourse’.116 These debasing words serve, in Theopompus and Pollux alike, the function of abjecting the old woman, again in strikingly corporeal terms; and such abjection is a crucial social technology because old women are often free of husbands and thus uncontrolled (another comic motif ). Pollux’s quotations are primarily introduced to anchor his discourse in the literature of the prestigious past: they are cited to exemplify lexical 115

Henderson (1991) 149.

116

Henderson (1991) 200.

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points, not for their content. But content cannot be so quickly deactivated: citation introduces intertextual pluralism, opens up possibilities for multiple hermeneutic alleys. It is notable that Pollux’s woman is an almost exclusively comic creation (Eupolis, Phrynichus, Pherecrates, Cratinus, Aristophanes, Theopompus; only Isaeus strikes a different note), and this steers his reader towards a certain culturally enshrined vision of the pleasures and threats of females. Intertextuality is often presented as a form of interpretative pluralism and liberation (particularly from the tyranny of ‘allusion and influence’), but in this case – and there may be a more general underlying point about all conceptions of ‘freedom’ – it is a carefully controlled, and indeed carefully controlling, mode of operation. Pollux’ work, then, is not simply a collection of miscellaneous synonyms: it provides an idealised map of society, a vision of les mots et les choses that performs and manipulates the paradigmatic relationships at the heart of Romano-Greek society. This lexicon is thus an archive in action: here you learn through words about the world, its deep structures and unspoken orders, its hierarchies, equivalences, symbolic parataxeis, and – not least – its subtle equivocations. tex tual revolutions During this period there also arose a series of revolutions in textual technology. Perhaps the most important was the appearance of the codex (or book), which gradually replaced the unwieldy papyrus scroll.117 Scrolls were designed for information storage in libraries; they slotted neatly into horizontal slots, with an identification tag visible at the end. The codex, however, allowed for quick scanning back and forth across several pages – an early form of what we now call ‘hypertextuality’. It is surely no coincidence that the earliest codices contained Christian and technical material, two genres of discourse that privilege, indeed insist upon, cross-referencing and non-linear reading.118 The Christian Bible, in particular, was a text that many exegetes wanted to read hypertextually, as they grappled with its multiple authors and often conflicting demands. The Bible was, indeed, perhaps the first book conceived of as a textual embodiment of the cosmos. In the beginning was the word: God’s language was the sacred transcription of the mysteries of the universe, of human society and mortality, of bodily suffering and spiritual redemption. 117 118

Roberts and Skeat (1983). See Habinek (1998) 117–21 for a different argument, that the codex was closely associated with sub-elite identity, in contrast with the high-status connotations of the papyrus roll.

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Another innovation – albeit less dramatic, perhaps – was the table of contents, which we find first in extant literature in the works of Scribonius Largus, the Elder Pliny, Aulus Gellius and Columella.119 At first sight, we might want to take these TOCs as consolidation of a new movement under the empire towards what we have called ‘hypertextual’ reading. As Andrew Riggsby’s contribution to this volume shows, however, Pliny’s TOC is not pragmatically useful in finding one’s way around this massive work; rather, it serves the rhetorical end of displaying his mastery. Yet although it would be hopelessly crude to see these devices as unilateral reflexes in response to a single, unified urge underlying the multifarious textual practices of the empire, it is clear that paratextual phenomena of this kind do begin to gain a hold in this period, and that they are intimately related to the intensification of activity associated with archival thinking. itemising knowledge Archival thinking encourages a specific approach to knowledge, as manipulable, discrete fragments. Like Propp’s structuralism, L´evi-Strauss’s mythography or Barthes’s cultural semiology, the texts analysed in this volume characteristically conceive of their primary operation as the analysis of raw material (whether ‘reality’ or pre-existing text) by a process of itemisation. ‘Knowledge’ is to be conceived of as an aggregate of discrete particles that are to be subjected to a process of analytical ordering. How can we conceptualise the relationship of this process of itemisation of knowledge to the imperial project? One metaphor that recurs in this book is that of ‘mapping’ knowledge.120 This is not an innocent image: the map is a central image of Roman imperial rhetoric, a taxonomy of the subject states of the global empire. Not all scholars are equally convinced that Agrippa’s famous dedication (Pliny, Natural history 3.17) was a map in our sense,121 but it certainly itemised the nations of the world. Similarly, the preface to The achievements of the divine Augustus (Res gestae) – an inscription copies of which were set up throughout the empire – speaks of the emperor’s subjection of ‘the whole world’ (orbem terrarum) to Roman imperium. The extraordinary fact of the subsumption of the multifarious 119

120 121

Pliny does, however, claim a precedent, for Latin literature at any rate (in litteris nostris), in the Epoptides of the late-Republican author Valerius Soranus, on whom see Holford-Strevens (2003) 30–1. Cf. Murphy (2004) 131–7 on the metaphor of mapping in Pliny’s Natural history. See most recently Brodersen (1995) 275–8 (arguing against the map), and more generally Nicolet (1991).

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nations of the earth under a single political framework was a repeated motif of imperial ideology, whether in the artistic representations carried in triumphs,122 or more formally in the development of world-maps. The relationship in a map between discrete parts and architectonic whole is simultaneously ‘imperial’ and ‘archival’: ‘unity in diversity’ is the rhetoric common to both modes of thinking. The manner of imperialism, though, was not the sole prerogative of the emperor: through the complex ‘chandelier’ structure of imperial bureaucracy, patronage and influence, it percolated down all the way to provincial aristocrats. In the atria of Roman noblemen across the empire, looted artworks signalled at once their exoticism and their submission to the necessity of the new economic, political and military order. Art galleries, such as we encounter in Petronius’ Satyricon and Philostratus’ Portraits, encourage the viewer to respond both to the individual artwork and to the act of assemblage that has created (and resourced) the viewing space. From the late Republic, meanwhile, we find the Roman nobles collecting books and hoarding them in purpose-built libraries in country villas: trophies of conquest, now largely tamed of their political and ethical urgency and consigned to the leisure space of the dominant elite. The archive controls time as well as space. The rows of statues in the forum of Augustus, for example, present a historico-temporal ‘map’ of ancestors, simultaneously individuated and unified in the service of their support for Augustus. Processions performed a similar rhetoric of universalism, whether the imperialist processions of the Hellenistic kings (most memorably that of Ptolemy Philadelphus, as described by Callixenus) or, on a smaller and more local scale, Roman aristocratic funeral processions, with their displays of ancestral masks.123 It is this capacity to control the representation of space and time, to figure its complex diversity in a single, appropriative space, that hallmarks imperial power. It is this same imperialist impulse that underlies much of the intellectual habit of knowledge collection under the empire. Large-scale compendia of knowledge (e.g., Seneca’s, Pliny’s and Apuleius’ Natural histories, Pamphila’s Collection of historical reminiscences, Favorinus’ Miscellaneous history, Aulus Gellius’ Attic nights, Aelian’s Miscellaneous history) perform, in their encyclopedic accumulation of diverse phenomena, the aggregative rhetoric of empire. Athenaeus’ Sophists at dinner, most notably, is dramatised (in emulation of Plato’s Symposium) at the dinner table of a wealthy Roman 122 123

E.g., see Murphy (2004) 154–60. See Rice (1983) for Callixenus; Flower (1995) on Roman funeral masks.

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patron, Larensis, ‘who outdid all of those who have inspired awe in their collection of books’ (3a).124 Larensis’ personal library, along with its textual transcription (the Sophists at dinner itself ), emblazons not only his cultured refinement but also his power within the imperial hierarchy.125 Edward Said writes as follows of nineteenth-century French imperialism: the power even in casual conversation to represent what is beyond metropolitan borders derives from the power of an imperial society, and that power takes the discursive form of a reshaping or reordering of ‘raw’ or primitive data into the local conventions of European narrative and formal utterance, or, in the case of France, the systematics of disciplinary order.126

The brilliance of Said’s various analyses of orientalist discourse lies in their ability to show exactly how politically active the concept of knowledge is, and particularly how the organisation of knowledge relates to the organisation of empire. Knowledge of the East, for Said, is driven by what Foucault would call the ‘historical a priori’ of empire. It is easy to see how parallels with Romano-Greek ethnography might be drawn: figures like Strabo, Arrian, Ptolemy and the periplous writers could be absorbed into the post-Hartog school of analyses of ‘the other’ (and, indeed, this process is already well underway).127 The ‘conquest of the world’ (Roman imperialism never sacrificed the rhetoric of world-empire to the truth, which was less flattering and certainly messier) evidently relates closely to both the literal mapping of the world and its symbolic mapping through the discourse of ethnography.128 But this volume stakes the case for something else, something both deeper and thicker. It is not, ultimately, the ideality of knowledge that interests us here, so much as its embodiment: the modes of selection, the processes of aggregation, the formal techniques for its presentation, the cultural meaning of the work that lends it its flesh. The two are, of course, mutually reciprocal: there is no matter without form, as Aristotle would say, just as there is no form without matter. The aim of this volume, however, is to rectify an imbalance. Classical scholarship has traditionally privileged 124 125

126 127 128

For Larensis, see Braund (2000a). According to Athenaeus, Marcus Aurelius had set Larensis in charge of ‘temples and sacrifices’ (!   )%, 3c); Braund (2000a) 6 argues that Larensis was in reality only a pontifex minor, the status of which was ‘rather less than the glorious supervision of Roman religion suggested in the eulogy’. The extent to which Athenaeus’ characters map onto real individuals, however, is radically uncertain. Said (1993) 119. On ‘Greeks and barbarians’ in the Roman period, see esp. Schmidt (1999); Hartog (2001). Momigliano (1974); Nicolet (1991).

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idealised knowledge, because it has found the myth of disembodied knowledge so congenial to its own aspirations. The essays in this volume seek to re-embody knowledge within the rich cultural context of the early Roman Empire. Our central proposition is that there is a ‘discursive form’ (to borrow Said’s phrase) of knowledge that is characteristically imperial, which is to say the typical modes of operation of the archive: it rests upon itemisation, analysis, ordering, hierarchisation, synthesis, synopsis. ‘Imperial’, of course, does not necessarily mean ‘pro-imperial’: the opposition between consolidation and challenging of society is too crude. An author like Lucian offers a number of archival, ‘synoptic’ figures that mimic the rhetoric of empire, such as the auction of philosophers in the Sale of lives and the aerial view in Icaromenippus. But it would be hopelessly simplistic to decide on this basis that he was either ‘supporting’ or ‘criticising’: as we have seen above, his knowing satire is subtle and dangerously broadranging. Other modes of knowledge, particularly philosophical and theological, simultaneously borrow the symbolic force of imperial-colonialist rhetoric and seek to transcend it: Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius, also discussed above, is an excellent example. Still other authors express the frail inability of language to match the diversity of the world: Pollux’ word book, for example, does not include ‘every word’ ( / 0"), for it is not easy to ‘gather together’ (%1!#) ‘everything’ () into a single book (1.2). Rhetorical recusatio, for sure; but in an address to the emperor (as his dedicatory epistle is), Pollux is conspicuously rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. Moreover, the fact of cultural and linguistic differences between Romans, Greeks and other groups means that this volume is best viewed as a complex tessellation of interrelated responses and reactions to the imperial order. The ordering of knowledge is an ‘imperial’ phenomenon in that it is mired in the real world of the Roman Empire – but that observation does not mean that we should confine ourselves to crudely characterising texts variously as ‘consolidatory’ or ‘subversive’. The process that we are describing as the ‘ordering’ of knowledge, thus, operates on two levels. First, knowledge is commissioned, impelled, commanded, by or in competition with the authoritarian edicts of empire. Secondly, however, and no less importantly, it is also given its own distinctive matrix of intratextual ‘orders’: items of knowledge are isolated, lemmatised, structured, ranked. It is the interaction between these two levels, the political and the textual, that forms the substance of this book. As we have stressed, the Roman Empire was not the first example of a culture where the organisation of knowledge reflected (in the complex ways we have described) the political order: while many of its practices were

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distinctive (or gained new significance from their new context), many others were inherited from earlier Rome or adapted from Hellenistic Greece. Nor was it the last. As John Henderson’s chapter shows, mediaeval Europe took over Rome’s rhetoric of intertwined knowledge and empire and put it to new uses in the service of the Christian God. Rome’s imperial legacy to the mediaeval world (and indeed beyond) was not confined to the spheres of politics, economics and warfare: she also showed that an empire must be an empire of knowledge. What the essays in this volume show is just how powerful, intense, multifarious, durable and – above all – intellectually captivating was this society’s engagement in the ordering of knowledge.

part ii

Knowledge and textual order

chapter 2

Fragmentation and coherence in Plutarch’s Sympotic Questions Jason K¨onig

read ing miscell ani sm This volume attempts to draw out some of the ordering principles which lie beneath the surface of the Roman Empire’s compilatory writing. The difficulty of identifying any such principles is particularly acute for works which have a strongly miscellanistic quality. I should say at the outset that it is hard to isolate any clearly bounded ancient genre of the ‘miscellany’. It seems more fruitful instead to recognise the recurring presence of a range of miscellanistic characteristics across many different kinds of writing. Miscellanistic works – in the sense in which I understand that term here – are marked primarily by the disparateness of the material they accumulate. In some cases that quality of disparateness is supplemented by other markers: for example, many miscellanistic texts claim that their primary aim is to give pleasure to their readers’, rather than to instruct or to be comprehensive; many make claims about the randomness of their own structures. Sometimes, for sure, all of these characteristics are combined with each other. Moreover, in some cases we find authors situating their own texts in relation to other miscellanistic writing. For example, Aulus Gellius, Attic nights pr. 4–10, not only chooses a title which evokes the idea of variety (the many different nights the author has spent in reading and compiling), but also compares his title with the titles other miscellanistic writers have chosen, in a way which suggests a high degree of self-consciousness about his work’s place among a series of other similar texts.1 At other times, however, these miscellanistic characteristics find their way in a diluted form into works 1

Vardi (2004) usefully discusses the difficulty of defining any genre of ‘miscellanism’, while also at the same time mapping out some of the recurring tropes of miscellanistic writing in Gellius’ preface and elsewhere. It is worth noting, however, that even Gellius, who is one of the ancient writers who comes closest to identifying a genre of miscellanism and identifying his own work as part of it, insists on undermining that identification even as he gestures towards it, since one of his main aims in this preface is actually to distinguish his own work from the others he lists, which he criticises for their excessive bulk (e.g., Gell. NA pr. 11–12).

43

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which fit (similarly fluid) categories like encyclopedic or technical writing. In that sense I hope the problems this chapter raises will have resonances for a wide range of different kinds of compilatory writing, not only for those who make it into Gellius’ list of rival miscellanists. How can we make sense of writing which is apparently marked by lack of system and lack of order? There are many possible approaches: one might look, for example, for underlying ideological coherence – a sense that disparate material is unified through being imbued with distinctive ways of viewing the world; such analysis might reveal the unseen effects of particular ethical priorities or particular assumptions and anxieties about hierarchies of social status, gender or cultural superiority (as argued for Pollux’s lexicographical compilation in the introduction to this volume). One might also look for recurring images and thematic patterns lying beneath the apparently chaotic surfaces of these texts – despite the fact that they so often claim not to have any such patterning. We should perhaps be cautious of that approach: the gesture of rehabilitating texts on the grounds of their thematic coherence is in some ways a relic of old-fashioned literary criticism,2 and there is an obvious danger of anachronistically mapping our own critical preoccupation with making sense of ancient literature on to ancient readers. I argue here, however, that the idea of thematic order does nonetheless have some applicability for the miscellanistic writing of the Roman Empire. Many ancient miscellanists, I suggest, gesture towards thematic order, drawing us into a search for patterns while also at the same time disrupting and frustrating that search. On that argument, the claim many miscellanists make, that they are composing at random, turns out, at least in some cases, to be a matter of convention, a miscellanistic pose which can hide careful structuring beneath it.3 Perhaps most importantly, one might think about the way in which disparate material may be unified by a consistent methodology of reading. In particular, the image of the active reader, who must use his or her reading as a resource, a starting-point for his or her own coherent philosophical development, is a common one 2 3

E.g., see Eagleton (1996) 40–4 for a convenient account of the importance of coherence for the New Criticism of the mid-twentieth century. For claims about random composition, see, for example, Gell. NA pr. 2–3, discussed by HolfordStrevens (2003) 34, who cites a number of parallels, including Pamphile (attested by Phot. Bibl. 17: 119b 27–32), Clem. Al. Strom. 6.2.1, Plin. Ep. 1.1.1; Pliny’s claim in particular has been shown to be dubious: see Sherwin-White (1966) 21–3 and 42–51; cf. Vardi (2004) 169–79 who draws a contrast between the genuinely random structure of Gellius’ miscellany, and other miscellanistic works where we find much clearer signs of thematic grouping (with brief mention (169–70) of Plutarch’s Quaest. conv., along with works by Athenaeus, Macrobius, Clement and Solinus). Cf., p. 62, below, for discussion of the disingenuous nature of Plutarch’s claims about the randomness of his own composition in Quaest. conv.

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in ancient philosophical literature. Here one of the most obvious Imperial examples – albeit not a miscellanistic example – is in the work of Galen, who often represents his medical writing as provisional, stressing the fact that each reader must reach a full understanding of each individual subject, and of the medical art as a whole, for him- or herself, via proper application of logical method.4 This chapter takes Plutarch’s Sympotic questions (Quaest. conv.) – an enormous accumulation of dinner-party conversations on scientific, literary and sympotic topics, recorded accurately, so Plutarch claims, from several decades of symposium-going – as a test-case for those approaches. I want to suggest that this work exemplifies all of the different kinds of order outlined in the previous paragraph. I also want to suggest, however, that Plutarch is in some ways highly untypical, especially in the degree to which he is self-conscious about his own project of conjuring order from diversity.5 More specifically, I argue that the Sympotic questions does offer us, contrary to first impressions, a carefully orchestrated vision of how we can draw coherence out of its own fragmented aggregation of material, if only we read with proper philosophical attention. In order to achieve that effect, it draws on models of how to read which are carefully theorised elsewhere in Plutarch’s oeuvre (more on that in the next section). The Sympotic questions prompts us to read actively – in other words to respond creatively and philosophically for ourselves to the many different questions under discussion, and to stay alert to the recurring themes and patterns of the 4 5

E.g., see Gal., Thras. 3–4 for one good example of that. The Quaest. conv. had demonstrable influence over later miscellanism, but none of its imitators quite matches Plutarch’s fascination with the tension between order and disorder: see Gell. NA 3.6 and 17.11 for essays which take their material from the Quaest. conv.; and cf. n. 3, above, for Vardi’s argument that Gellius on the whole resists the underlying coherence of the Quaest. conv.; however, see also Morgan (2004) on the underlying ethical coherence of Gellius’ work; also Gell. NA pr. 16–18, where Gellius emphasises, like Plutarch, his hope that the reader will be inspired to personal reflection and improvement by his reading of the work, a passage which shows some traces of Plutarchan requirements for the reader to create his or her own coherence. Macrobius draws on the Quaest. conv. heavily in Saturnalia book 7, but he is much less interested than Plutarch in showing his guests indulging in inventive speculation (e.g., the Greek guests in the Saturnalia are repeatedly criticised by other speakers for their ingenuity and inventive styles of argumentation (e.g., 7.5.1, 7.9.9, 7.16.1)). At first sight, he seems to fall far short of Plutarch’s ideals of active reading (i.e., the idea that each individual – both the symposium guests and the reader of the Quaest. conv. – should value the process of thinking creatively more than getting the right answer); on closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that Macrobius is committed to the principle that verbatim quotation of the literature of the past is quite compatible with creative, original, personally distinctive expression: ‘language, for Macrobius, was what the present user made of it, even though the thoughts and expressions of the present were inseparable from what had been thought and written earlier by others’ (MacCormack (1998) 82). In that sense, as for Gellius, we may be seeing the traces of a Plutarchan insistence on the way in which the interpretations of the individual reader or sympotic speaker brings a kind of order to diverse material.

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texts. Plutarch also shows us his fellow dinner-guests learning that style of active response for themselves, using the topics they discuss as springboards for personal response, as stepping-stones in their philosophical lives. The work demonstrates, in other words, how processes of universally relevant philosophical enquiry can start from frivolous snatches of conversation. In that sense, it follows the principle stated in Xenophon, Symposium 1.1, that the true philosopher can do philosophy anywhere.6 In addition, I also argue that Plutarch hints at parallels between those patterns of philosophical learning, and the organising patterns of social and political life in Roman Greece. Plutarch sets all of these discussions on specific occasions, many of them in specific cities, contexts which are briefly but vividly sketched in their opening lines. In doing so, as we shall see, he not only foregrounds the links between fragmented conversational subject matter and all-empowering philosophy, but also, in a way which is closely parallel with that, insists on the power of fragmented local identities within the all-embracing political and philosophical culture of the Roman Empire. It is a vision of overarching Greek culture as something which depends on and encompasses local specificity, and which is in tune with the prominence Plutarch gives elsewhere to the intertwining of local identity with philosophical cosmopolitanism within his own life.7 And that vision, as we shall see in the final section of this chapter, frames and enhances his insistence on engagement with detail in the quest for overarching philosophical knowledge. What implications does that parallel have for our understanding of Plutarch’s view of the cultural and political hierarchies of his own contemporary Greco-Roman world? We have suggested in our introduction that the archival patterns of thought which map unity through diversity may be fundamentally ‘imperial’ patterns, developed in the service of empire. We have also suggested that they are available to be reshaped in ways which subvert or redirect the rhetoric of imperial dominance. Plutarch’s use of the themes of unity and diversity is one such reshaping, based on the conviction that the final unified framework within which the fragmented diversity of the world can most powerfully be contained will be a philosophical one. And that philosophical framework, he suggests, finds not only its most 6

7

The question of whether it is right or possible to combine philosophical speech with the playful atmosphere of the symposium is the subject of both the preface and first dialogue of book 1; in the preface (612d) Plutarch justifies that combination with reference to the philosophical symposia of Plato and Xenophon and others. Cf. Plutarch’s Greek questions, where his exploration of Greek tradition takes the form of inquiry into obscure local customs and local terminology.

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fertile ground but also its most powerful guiding metaphor in the Panhellenic interweaving of local commitment with overarching Greek identity. That is not to say that Plutarch’s philosophical project in the Sympotic questions is insulated from the realities of Roman power. On the contrary, he is obsessed with its capacity to encompass and explain Roman culture as well as Greek,8 and with the many things it has in common with non-Greek thought, Roman, Egyptian and otherwise.9 But it is nevertheless strongly marked as a Greek project, dependent upon patterns of thought whose basic technique of seeking unity in diversity resembles the unity-in-diversity of Greek Panhellenic experience. plutarch on readin g Plutarch is repeatedly interested in giving us guidelines for proper philosophical response to texts and speeches. That insistence on personal response as a central part of philosophy, is one of the things which unites his many writings – whether historical, scientific, ethical – as part of a broader philosophical project. The text which lays out those principles in most detail is Plutarch’s On listening. In the traditional order of the Moralia the work comes close to the beginning of the collection, preceded only by On the education of children, and On how the young man should listen to poetry. Whoever arranged these treatises seems to have seen these three works as programmatic and interconnected, moving as they do from the techniques of education and interpretation suitable for the very youngest children, through to the approaches which are appropriate for young men, and indeed all men, once they graduate to proper study of philosophy. That assumption of coherence is in some ways unconvincing, not least because the first work, On the education of children, is generally believed to be by someone other than Plutarch.10 But there are clearly signalled overlaps between the second and third works in the series, on poetry and listening respectively. The work on poetry suggests strategies of reading suitable for the young, who listen to poetry before they graduate to philosophical subject matter, and who should accustom themselves to reading creatively, imposing ethically edifying interpretations even on passages which at first sight seem unsuited to such interpretation, in order that they will be more prepared for philosophical ideas once they are exposed to 8 9

E.g., see Preston (2001), Boulogne (1992) and (1987) on those themes in the Greek and Roman questions. 10 See Whitmarsh (2001) 98–100 for brief discussion. E.g., in his work On Isis and Osiris.

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them.11 On listening deals with the next step on that path, as the very opening sentence of the work suggests in offering advice to a young man named Nicander, who has just reached adulthood, with the freedom to manage his own education which that implies. Plutarch emphasises first (On listening 1 (37c–e)) the need for Nicander to take reason as his controlling guide, rather than revelling in the sense of freedom from guidance which adulthood might be thought to bring with it. He then suggests (2 (37e–38a)) that Nicander will be familiar with philosophical reasoning already because of the way in which his early training has been saturated with it. Clearly the addressee is envisaged as someone who has been brought up according to the precepts of On how the young man should listen to poetry; the techniques recommended in On listening are part of a lifelong project of philosophical education. After this prefatory address to Nicander, Plutarch then stresses both the benefits and the dangers the sense of hearing can bring with it, arguing for a style of listening that is obedient and attentive, but also at the same time selective and sceptical.12 The whole of the rest of the dialogue is dedicated to illustrating those principles, and above all to demonstrating the way in which listening should be an active process, which involves responding for oneself to the arguments one has heard. It is a technique which may not come easily to the young, he explains, but which can be developed with perseverance (17 (47b–d)): ‘For the mind is not like a vessel in need of filling, but rather, like wood, needs only a spark to kindle it, to produce an impulse towards inventiveness, and a desire for the truth’ (18 (48c)).13 Passive, unreflective listening, by that standard, can never be adequate for anyone who aspires to philosophical progress. One of the work’s many striking features – which hints at the relevance of these principles to the Sympotic questions – is the recurring presence of the symposium as a point of reference. For Plutarch, in this text at least, the symposium is both an imagined context for the styles of listening and response he recommends, and at the same time an important metaphor for those styles. In 6, for example, he suggests that one should listen affably, ‘as though one is a guest at a dinner or a festival banquet’, in other words not in a spirit of rivalry, but also not in a way which buries one’s capacity for criticism: 11 12 13

See Whitmarsh (2001) 49–54; cf. Zadorojnyi (2002) for the argument that this stress on ethical response in On how a young man should listen to poetry is Platonic in character. See Goldhill (1999) 106–7 for brief discussion.  / $ 2!#
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49

When speakers are successful, we should assume that they are successful not by chance or by accident, but rather through their care and hard work and study, and we should imitate these qualities, feeling admiration for them and envy. When speakers make mistakes, on the other hand, we must turn our minds to the question of what the reason for the error was and where it came from. (6 (40b))14

Similarly in 10 we hear that we should be willing to listen respectfully, but also be ready to contribute problems for discussion when that is appropriate, just as an ideal symposium guest would do. And in 14 Plutarch explains that we should avoid the temptation of passive listening, like those who sit back and enjoy themselves at a dinner party while others do the work. Rather we must work together with the speaker, criticising our own arguments as much as his. Mutual respect and co-operation between listener and speaker are the hallmarks of Plutarchan listening, as they are of all sympotic conversation. And these skills of responsive, self-reflexive interpretation are precisely the things which allow us to draw together the varied impressions our experience of the world confronts us with, just as they allow us to draw together in a morally coherent way the varied material of Plutarch’s oeuvre, and the ostentatiously varied miscellanism of the Sympotic questions. What relevance do these principles of responsive reading have, in practice, for Plutarch’s massive enterprise of knowledge aggregation? For one thing they hint at ethical significance lying behind Plutarch’s agglomerations of detail, which have the potential to spark self-reflection and morally admirable lifestyle in the responsive reader. That is most obvious in his collections of historical material, both in the Lives and elsewhere, with their focus on the deeds and sayings of individuals, which offer both positive and negative examples for the reader to decipher and assess. A number of these historical compilations actually underline the disjointed nature of the excerpted material they present us with, and yet at the same time prompt us to see an underlying potential for unity. In the prefatory letter of his Sayings of kings and commanders,15 for example, Plutarch draws attention to the way in which the emperor Trajan will be able to read these snippets briefly and yet also profitably: ‘taking away from these brief words ( 1 ,) the opportunity for reflection (2)!.

) on many men who have been worthy of memory’ (172e).16 Those closing phrases of the work’s 14

15 16

# "7 8  )%", , $  2 -   * "  2 * "!!9   9  ")!  ),  "" ,  )%": ! 5  : . #  * ;" ",  '  ?)!    5 ,!. See Beck (2002) for arguments in favour of viewing the prefatory letter as Plutarch’s own work.  1 ,  2)!.

 2  2   ""  !",  "1.

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prologue draw attention to the paradoxical combination of brevity with lasting value, whose attainment will be dependent on the reader’s capacity to respond through active ‘reflection’ (2)!.

), a word Plutarch uses similarly elsewhere to describe the most desirable kind of reflective response to reading.17 In the prologue to Bravery of women, similarly, Plutarch proclaims both the disjointed nature of his narrative, and at the same time the need to look for a defining essence of bravery which underlies the superficial differences between the many examples he is presenting us with, and which is the same for women as for men, though it may not at first sight seem so.18 Coherence comes, then, in part from the capacity of disparate material to be interpreted within a consistent moral framework. Secondly, and perhaps less obviously, it has increasingly been recognised that Plutarch embeds the requirement for personal response in the very form of his writing, forcing us to take up the provocative challenges of interpretation precisely through his arrangement of material. In the Lives, for example, the final passages of synkrisis – where the pairs of biographical subjects are compared with each other at length, after they have been individually biographised – not only prompt reflection on similarities and differences between the men in question, but also force us to reassess each of them individually, through their frequent inconsistency with the material we have already encountered.19 In that sense the ordering of the work’s details is very far from being neutral and artless, but rather makes a central contribution in provoking response. lea rn ing to read in the s y m p o t i c q u e s t i o n s The Sympotic questions, I will argue here, is the among most intricate and self-conscious of all Plutarch’s actualisations of those principles. And yet, despite that, the text has frequently had a bad press.20 The negative attention it has received is typical of common criticisms of encyclopedic and miscellanistic writing. Plutarch’s arguments, for example, are branded ineffective, even frivolous. Franc¸ois Fuhrmann, not untypically, laments as follows: 17 18

19 20

E.g., the same word is used in Quomod. adul. 19e to describe the process of creative reading, which goes beyond face value in its search for meaning in a text. Plut. De mul. vir. 243b–d. For the general point, see McInerney (2003) on the way in which Plutarch’s new understanding of conjugal relations emerges (but only partly) from beneath this apparently disparate collection of conventional moralizing material. See Duff (1999), esp. 243–86. For an important exception to that, see Romeri (2002), esp. 109–89, who analyses at length the way in which Plutarch privileges speech ahead of consumption, drawing on Platonic precedents, in this work and others.

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Au lieu de chercher les causes v´eritables des ph´enon`emes, Plutarque se contente en g´en´eral de la vraisemblance, en citant plusieurs th´eories qui s’y rapportent, ou en rappelant ce que divers auteurs en ont dit. Les diff´erentes opinions se succ`edent ainsi sans aucune analyse et le plus souvent sans solution, comme si ceux qui sont charg´es de les d´efendre s’amusaient avec elles.’21

In this case, the fault is attributed not so much to Plutarch himself as to the generic assumptions he is working with22 and to the ‘affaiblissement g´en´eral de l’esprit scientifique’,23 an assumption which exemplifies a common failure to understand the rhetorical idiom of so much ancient scientific writing.24 And second, closely related to that criticism, is the suggestion that Plutarch’s main interest is in the indiscriminate amassing of information. Michel Jeanneret, for example, categorises Plutarch with Athenaeus and Macrobius, as writers who aim for quantity and variety of material, in an ‘orgy’ of erudition, rather than seeking narrative realism or convincing argumentation.25 Both of those criticisms, I suggest, underestimate more than anything the importance of Plutarch’s self-conscious exploration of the activities of reading, listening and interpreting within this work. And both of them are criticisms to which the Sympotic questions has powerful in-built replies. The first point to make is that the Sympotic questions shows us how comprehensive erudition can be adapted for specific social situations, through the symposiasts’ capacity for creative manipulation of their wide reading. Knowledge in the Plutarchan symposium is always a performance.26 In that sense, the Sympotic questions resists commonly stated modern assumptions that the project of compiling knowledge in textual form, and the practice of exhaustive reading, are faceless exercises of indiscriminate absorption and accumulation.27 In addition, Plutarch draws on the traditional status of the symposium as a space for elite initiation in representing these conversations as occasions for himself and his fellow symposiasts to learn the distinctive 21 22 24 25 26

27

Fuhrmann (ed.) (1972) xxiv, quoted approvingly by Teixeira ( 1992) 221; and by Flaceli`ere and Irigoin (eds.) (1987) lxxxiii. Cf. similar criticisms elsewhere, e.g., Barrow (1967) 21. 23 Ibid.: ‘cette “triviality” etait, h´ See Fuhrmann (ed.) (1972) xxiii. elas, le lot du genre’. ´ On the rhetorical character of Imperial scientific writing, see esp. Barton (1994b). E.g., see Jeanneret (1991) 166–7; for criticism of Jeanneret’s assumption, see Relihan (1992) 218. Martin (1998) discusses the way in which performance, often within a sympotic context, is a central part of the wisdom of the seven sages of Greek tradition; Plutarch’s engagement with that tradition is clear from his work Symposium of the seven wise men, which depicts the seven sages drinking and talking together, and which has many similarities with the guiding principles of sympotic, philosophical discussion in the Quaest. conv. – especially in those passages where the sages take it in turns to offer opinions on ethical and political problems – as Romeri (2002) 109–89 shows. Cf. n. 29, below, for Jeanneret’s claims about the facelessness of the Quaest. conv. and other sympotic compilations.

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styles of ingenious analysis with which the work is saturated, not only by listening but also by responding in a spirit both of imitation and of friendly rivalry to the conversations they hear. For example, he repeatedly returns to the scene of young men learning appropriate styles of speech from their older companions, or of Roman readers working hard to learn and participate in Greek styles of speech.28 In doing so, he draws attention to his own involvement,29 and the involvement of his Roman addressee, Sosius Senecio, in many of the conversations he describes. Often, for example, as we shall see further in the next section, Plutarch is himself the figure who speaks last and most authoritatively, as if to set an example to the younger or less experienced men who have spoken before him. At other points he takes us back to the symposia of his youth, for example in book 9, where we see Plutarch as a star pupil in the skills of sympotic conversation, trumping his fellow students in front of their great philosophical mentor, Ammonius. We, too, are offered instruction, both in the prologues, where Plutarch often lays out explicit recommendations for habits of learning and speaking; and also, implicitly, in the models for action which are presented to us in the conversations themselves. If the young symposiasts are to learn from the example of watching and responding to the arguments of their elders – as Plutarch recommends repeatedly in his work On listening – it seems hard to avoid the impression that we are being prompted to engage with those models in similar ways ourselves through the act of reading.30 Learning, for these young symposiasts at least, works by repetition. The recurring rhythms and gestures of sympotic conversation become ingrained in them through repeated exposure. And the repetitions of Plutarch’s text invite us to share in that experience. What, then, are the defining features of the style of speech which is on display? Most distinctively of all, it is a style of speech which aims for a variety of different explanations for each question which is proposed. The questions under discussion tend to arise from the circumstances of the symposium, as the symposiasts comment on recent events, on their surroundings, or on the running of the symposium they are attending. 28 29

30

See Swain (1990) 130–1. Claims that Plutarch takes a back seat in this work could hardly be more wrong: e.g., see Barrow (1967) 15 and Jeanneret (1991) 167, who writes that ‘the author melts into an anonymous collector and mediator’. For good examples of discussions where Plutarch makes his own contribution the climax of the discussion, see (in addition to those discussed below): Quaest. conv. 1.9, 5.2, 5.4, 6.4, 6.5, 6.6, 7.5. Cf., e.g., Swain (1996) 138: ‘A key part of Plutarch’s plan for moral improvement, with the aim of constituting one’s life according to philosophy, was the observation of others’, with several examples from the Moralia.

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Plutarch and his fellow guests then take it in turns to propose solutions.31 They quote repeatedly from their wide reading, in a way which often leads to juxtaposition of competing explanations from different authorities: Plato and Aristotle figure most often, but they share the stage with a dazzling range of other authorities. In addition, the speakers often speculate on their own account, with varying degrees of plausibility and ingenuity. Originality and ingenious, improvised speculation seem to be valued almost as much as exhaustive knowledge of earlier writing.32 The use of alternative explanation as an interpretative strategy was of course far from being unusual. It was enshrined most influentially in a number of Aristotelian works (esp. PseudoAristotle, Problems), which raise scientific problems in question form, and then proceed to answer them with one or more possible explanations.33 It is also widespread within the aetiological and scientific work of many of Plutarch’s contemporaries, and Plutarch himself uses variations of it in a great many of his own works.34 There is also evidence from the Hellenistic period and later for specific association of this style of analysis with learned sympotic writing and styles of sympotic speech.35 What effects does Plutarch achieve through his traditional but also unusually vivid emphasis on this strategy of ‘interpretative pluralism’?36 Plutarch’s use of it signals his alignment with the precedent of the PseudoAristotelian Problems, casting his own work as a version of Aristotle’s projects of systematising and advancing a great range of different areas of human knowledge. It also signals his alignment with some of Aristotle’s successors. Theophrastus, for example, in his meteorological work, repeatedly accepts a variety of possible explanations for one single phenomenon. In doing so, he not only gives an impression of comprehensiveness, showing that he has 31

32 33 34

35

Cf. Jacob (2001), esp. xxx–iii on Athenaeus’ very similar use of the technique of z¯et¯esis (which he suggests may date back to the symposia of the Mouseion of Alexandria (lxxii)), whereby one guest proposes a problem, which is then answered by others; the difference is that Athenaeus’ speakers rely more heavily than Plutarch and his fellow-guests on quotation of texts recalled from memory, and less on the kind of ingenious personal response which so often follows on from the quotation of past authorities in the Quaest. conv. The Quaest. conv.’s distinctive style of ingenious conversation is best analysed by Frazier and Sirinelli (eds.) (1996) 177–207. Ps.-Aristotle, Problems are quoted and argued over in Quaest. conv. 1.9, 3.7, 3.8, 3.10, 6.8, 6.9, 7.5, 8.3 and 8.10; see also Boulogne (1992) 4689, n. 47, citing Metaph. 983b4–6, 995b1–3. In that sense Feeney (1998) 129 is surely wrong to characterise alternative explanation as an exclusively Latin technique; in doing so he mentions that alternative explanation features in Plutarch’s Roman questions, which analyse Roman customs, but not in his Greek questions; that distinction ignores the prevalence of this technique elsewhere in Plutarch’s work: e.g., see Natural questions (discussed by Harrison (2000)), On the E at Delphi, On the sign of Socrates and On Isis and Osiris; see also Pailler (1998) on the recurring presence of the question within Plutarch’s lives of figures from the archaic period. 36 See Hardie (1992) 4754 for that phrase. See Cameron (1995) 71–103 (esp. 103).

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investigated a range of possible causes; he also emphasizes the importance of the four elements – earth, air, fire and water – for his view of the workings of the universe, offering one explanation for each element.37 It also has some overlaps with methods of analysis which were common in Epicurean38 and Pythagorean39 philosophy. In addition, it was closely related to common patterns of argumentation which were ingrained in rhetorical theory, and which would presumably have come as second nature to Plutarch and many of his readers, given their likely saturation in rhetorical training.40 And it was well suited to express the speculative, agonistic idiom which lay behind much ancient scientific reasoning, and which seems to have arisen – at least originally – from the practice whereby different experts would offer competing explanations for the same phenomenon in public contexts.41 In the Sympotic questions that point takes on added complexity through the presence of individuals from a wide range of different professions, so that the variety of different responses is in a number of places represented as a vehicle for productive comparison between different professional viewpoints.42 Perhaps most importantly, it offers the opportunity to bring different authors of the past into dialogue with each other and with the symposiasts of the present,43 allowing for comparison between different explanations and different principles of explanation, and in the 37 38

39 40 41

42

43

See Taub (2003) 121–4; also 151 on similar techniques in Seneca’s meteorological writing. See Hardie (1992) 4761; Asmis (1984) 321–36. Epicurean theory holds that all explanations are equally valuable, the main aim of explanation being to remove superstition by showing that a number of plausible rational explanations exist; in some of his works Plutarch rejects that assumption, tending to hierarchise his alternative explanations according to plausibility (cf. Boulogne (1992) 4694), but the Quaest. conv. in places comes close to endorsing that Epicurean view, albeit for very different reasons, by the suggestion that all responses may be equally valid because of their equal capacity to inspire philosophical reflection. E.g., see Hardie (1992) 4781–3, mentioning the close links between Platonism and Pythagoreanism in this period, and the influence of Pythagoreanism on Plutarch’s teacher Ammonius. See Schenkenveld (1997) and (1996). E.g., see Barton (1994b), esp. 133–7 on medicine as a ‘conjectural’ skill within which guesswork played a necessary and accepted role within prognosis, and 147–9 on the centrality of the agˆon to ancient science. See Hardie (1992) 4754–6, with reference a number of examples: e.g., Quaest. conv. 9.14 where the guest list includes ‘the rhetor Herodes, the Platonist philosopher Ammonius, Plutarch’s brother Lamprias, Trypho the doctor, Dionysus of Melite the farmer, the Peripatetic Menephylus, and Plutarch himself’ (4755), many of whom tailor their own answer to the question under discussion according to their own professional or philosophical preoccupations. Cf., e.g., Russell (1973) 44–6: he quotes 5.3 (676C–677b) as a striking but not at all unusual example of intricate knowledge of a large number of writers within a very short passage; cf. 8.2 (718c), where one of the guests suggests making Plato a ‘partner’ or ‘contributor’ ( ) in the discussion. That technique of introducing authors of the past into dialogue stretches back to Plato (e.g., the ventriloquising of Simonides at Pl. Prt. 339a–347b), but the sheer frequency of Plutarch’s quotations takes it on to a different scale. For similar examples in other Imperial authors, see Vitr. De arch. 9, pr. 17 on the process of entering into conversation with the authors of the past.

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process demonstrating the thoroughness with which one has considered the full range of possibilities. In some cases there is a sense that the explanations offered can be hierarchised according to criteria of plausibility. That impression is particularly prominent in some of Plutarch’s other dialogues, where there seems to be a gradual progression from less to more plausible interpretations.44 However, even there it is rarely the case that one single version is flagged unequivocally as the right one, and in some cases, especially in the enterprise of interpreting mythical material, that sense of indeterminacy, in the face of the secrets of the divine, is represented as necessary and even desirable.45 Speculative, sometimes even absurd, explanations are valued so highly within the Sympotic questions, as we shall see repeatedly in the section following, that Plutarch at times seems to be flaunting the unreliability of the responses he and (especially) his fellow symposiasts offer, and so making it deliberately difficult for us to judge exactly what lessons about reading and responding we should take away from this work. One explanation for that impression is the co-existence of two separate criteria for judging the value of explanations within the work. The first is the criterion of plausibility. But the second, which sometimes conflicts with that, is the requirement for explanations which conform to the requirement of sympotic harmony and entertainment – what Plutarch calls the ‘friend-making’ character of sympotic argument46 (not that the two are incompatible, since for Plutarch the forging of friendship can come from measured discussion as much as from frivolous speculation). As long as one of these two criteria is satisfied, it seems, the argument in question is likely to be acceptable, although the relative significance of those two criteria is also always open to playful negotiation, and there are moments when characters are criticised for being excessively ingenious or excessively rhetorical.47 The co-existence of these two different criteria for valuing contributions – plausibility and ingenuity – forces us to face up to the difficulty of distinguishing in practice between appropriate and inappropriate pieces of analysis. It shows us the value of ingenuity, but also underlines the need for personal experience in judging how far to take that ingenuity, or what circumstances to use it in. 44 45 46

47

E.g., see Hardie (1992) 4755, making that point for On the E at Delphi and On Isis and Osiris. See Hardie (1992) 4752–4. E.g., see the prologues to books 1 (612d) and 7 (697d); see also many of the articles in Montes Cala, Sanchez Ortiz de Landaluce and Gall´e Cejudo (eds.) (1999) for discussion of Plutarch’s approval of moderate consumption of wine for its capacity to encourage friendly interaction (esp. Montes Cala (1999), Teodorsson (1999), G´omez and Jufresa (1999) and Stadter (1999)). E.g., see 8.4 (723f–724a).

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More importantly, however, Plutarch’s playful displays of ‘interpretative pluralism’ in this work enact his positive valuation of active reading and listening; and in the process challenge the work’s readers to participate for themselves, to judge between the explanations on offer, or to come up with others which are more plausible or more ingenious. It is this skill of active reading, I have suggested, which allows us to bring coherence out of fragmentation. In that sense, the symposiasts whose answers fall towards the more speculative end of the spectrum are, paradoxically, giving an entertaining performance of the ‘serious’ philosophical requirement for personal response to discussion, where the fact of participating in the practice of alternative explanation is as important as the explanations themselves.48 The combination of ‘serious’ and ‘frivolous’,49 and the tension between single explanation and shared discussion where all contributions are valued equally,50 are, of course, central to the symposium tradition. But in the Sympotic questions those crucial sympotic ingredients are given a distinctively Plutarchan spin, as the frivolous joys of ingenious speculation are shown to embody the most important principles of philosophical education. Not only does the text flaunt the diversity and triviality of the subjects which are used as starting-points for discussion, but its subject matter is also further fragmented, and in some cases further trivialised, by the range of pathways each discussion follows, as new speakers attempt new explanations. In other words, the diversity of the Sympotic questions’ subject matter is itself further intensified by the action of multiplication which is central to the technique of alternative explanation, which fragments the world into seemingly independent and incompatible viewpoints. And yet this technique of fragmentation is itself, paradoxically, the starting-point for overarching philosophical understanding. triv ia lit y and coherence: s y m p o t i c q u e s t i o n s books 2 and 3 How, then, does Plutarch embed these principles within the detailed texture of his work? For one thing, he regularly offers his readers or his fellow symposiasts explicit justification for the strategies of ingenious and creative 48

49 50

Just as in the context of Roman religious interpretation the performance of multiple explanations for any single ritual may be in itself more significant than the desire for interpretative ‘accuracy’: see Feeney (1998), esp. 127–31. For Plutarch’s justification of the mixture of seriousnesss and frivolity in the Quaest. conv., see, e.g., the prologue to book 6 (686d). See Relihan (1992).

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argumentation. In 6.8, for example, Plutarch records his own attendance at a public ritual designed to drive out the disease of boulimia; and then afterwards at a symposium gathering where the disease was discussed. First, he tells us, a number of suggestions were made about the origins of the disease’s name and of the ritual which had just been performed. In summing up this first phase of the discussion Plutarch emphasises the atmosphere of co-operation in which it was conducted: ‘These were the things which made up the shared eranos of conversation’ (6.8 (694b)),51 an eranos being a feast funded by the shared contributions of the participants. Discussion then proceeds to the causes of the disease. After a number of suggestions about why boulimia tends to afflict those who walk through heavy snow, the symposiasts lapse into silence, at which point Plutarch offers his readers a brief aside: ‘When silence fell, I reflected on the fact that to idle and untalented people listening to the arguments of their elders brings a feeling of relaxation and satisfaction; whereas those who are ambitious and scholarly use it as spur to make their own attempt at seeking and tracking down the truth’ (694d).52 He then shrewdly introduces a claim made by Aristotle about the natural heat of the body, and the conversation once more begins to circulate, ‘as one would expect’ (?! 8 !' (694e)). This passage is typical of patterns which are repeated over and over again throughout the Sympotic questions: the use of past authority to provide a stimulus for present discussion; explicit recommendation of independent thought, in language which is closely reminiscent of Plutarch’s work On listening (especially the contrast between passive filling of the mind and active kindling of it at 48c, quoted above); and use of the language of contribution to describe individual attempts at explanation. The last of those is especially frequent, and is often combined with an emphasis on the way in which Plutarch’s own ‘contributions’ to discussion are improvised, made whether or not he is confident of having a reliable answer. In 3.5 (652b), for example, Plutarch tells us that he is reusing an argument he had come up with a few days before, when he had been forced to extemporise (!). In 2.2 (635c), similarly, Plutarch speaks ‘in order to avoid the impression of joining in the conversation without making a contribution’.53 The requirement of being an entertaining conversationalist, and to be generous with one’s

51 52

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 "7 8 @      %! %  . !",  7  , A % ? /   !1%,  ! " B "7 2 B  2 dirigantur . . . et nostra . . . suggestio,). A clumsy conceit has it that Isidore should shell out ‘first’ to Braulio, who helped get him going, so he can star ‘first’, in the councils of the saints, and this alibis the hyperbolic slide into the spectre of the fire-wielding scourge Isidore in the Universal Synod (‘for that reason, first prove generous, so that in the congregations of the Saints you may be counted fortunate and first. The Proceedings of the Council, too, in which . . .’; . . . ideo in me primum existe munificus, sic in sanctorum coetibus et felix habearis et primus. gesta etiam synodi in qua). This letter’s huff and puff measure in advance the mighty epic on its way to us. It will be a pressing part of Isidore’s crusade for the truth: ‘a blazing lamp, never dimming’, as the sign-off pictures him (lucerna ardens et non marcescens). III Isidore’s reply briskly deflates Braulio’s puffery, nicely dents our anticipation: he still longs to meet up, but at least knows his friend’s alive – because his letter did arrive. As to the message, umm, he got called away by a royal page before he could read it through; on his return, the letter had got lost, plus anything else in the envelope. So, shucks – could you please give it another shot? This charming little shuffle somewhere between cock-up / put-down works by making us see Isidore seeing the damn letter clear as clear – had it right here in my hand I did: 19

Viz. King Svinthila (Sintharius, 621-?31?). For the proceedings, see Collectio Canonum S. Isidoro Hispalensi Ascripta, Migne PL 84: 364–90.

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I wish while in this body I could see the sight of the person whose well-being I have ascertained. I shall make clear . . . I was not worthy of reading your pearls through . . . I took delivery of your card . . . I gave that card . . . in order to read through afterwards and write back . . . I couldn’t find the words you wrote . . . I didn’t read through your pearls . . . Write it me back over . . . I’ll take delivery . . . again utinam cuius cognoui salutem, in hoc corpore aspicerem et uisionem . . . manifestabo . . . non fui dignus tua perlegere eloquia . . . accepi pittacium tuum . . . dedi . . . illum pittacium . . . ut postea perlegerem et rescriberem . . . scripta tua non inueni . . . non perlegi eloquium tuum . . . rescribe mihi . . . iterum . . . recipiam.

The engaging simplicity of this epistolarity polarises tellingly against the unctuous courtesies that sandwich it. In ‘write back . . . Write it me back over’ here, Isidore parades the embarrassment of having to write back ‘please re-write’. He doesn’t mean to demand a re-think by ‘return to sender’, by ‘return post’. But the door is open for some self-reflection. What would a Christian snub look like? If a saint could chide . . . IV Invitation accepted. Braulio does what he’s told. And how, in a mock formal (re-)petition, full-blown as any oration and out to tell us as much. Announced with: ‘Now without more ado, I shall start to set out the case’ (sed iam causam exordiar). Out pour out-pourings, learned quibbling on ‘tearful calumnies, calumniating tears’ (et lacrimabiles calumniae et calumniabiles lacrimae). He gives it the works, then tells us so: I have spared wordiness not a whit and, it may be, gone full-tilt for the foolhardy . . . How about all that for bravura . . . ? nec uerbositatem carui et temeritatem fortassis incurri. . . . ecce quantum audaciae . . .

You see: the Etymologiae deserve all the stops pulled out, they will be worth the wait, they call to be imaged by, and weighed up against, nothing less than a litany of (eight) citations from Holy Scripture: Matthew 7, 2 Corinthians 11, Luke 14, Galatians 5, 1 Peter 4, Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12.11 and 13, 21–23, 1 John 4. Such an apostolic salvo, dominated by Pauline epistolarity. All power to this bishop’s elbow. It is now over six years since Braulio first tried to winkle the Origins out of Isidore. It has been one story of prevarication after another story of no reply: ‘Not yet finished; not yet written up; yr. letter never arrived; etc etc’. It’s enough to try a saint: nothing for it but to blast the book out of him with a hail of querulous clamorous flagitation – a sonorous tumultuous incantation:

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All this so you’ll at least bestow what you refused through {your} humility, through {my} riotous skulduggery tantum ut, quod noluisti per humilitatem, saltim tribuas per tumultuantem improbitatem

To quell this storm, Isidore must just post to Braulio his Etymologies – not as already in many a reader’s hands, ‘a headless chicken, chewed to bits’ (detruncatos corrososque), but specially for him, ‘copied out whole, checked, good and coherent’ (transcriptos, integros, emendatos et bene coaptatos). If this ultimate plea has pushed polite rhetoric to (– beyond (!) –) the limit and risked pumping up the volume to the point of challenging gospel, it has melodramatically set before us the vital importance to the fulfilment of the Etymologies of their – its – ‘accurate, full-length, perfectly transmitted, thoroughly articulated’ state. The ‘sacredness’ of this precious consignment of text is signalled here at the gate. Fortissimo. One more twist to come, before this uproarious screed is done. A mutual friend: Braulio once again links the fate of ‘their’ book with their ministry, by adding the recommendation that Isidore make a particular recommendation to fill a newly vacant see. Here, administrative patter between colleagues performs the return to ordinary businesslike lobbying now the big book has received its meed of turmoil: I suggest that . . . you suggest . . . Same for the suggestions I’ve made here as for these complaints I made above suggero ut . . . suggeras . . . tam de his quae hic suggessimus quam etiam de his quae supra questi fuimus

Rude, importunate, hybristic, ‘complaints’ they may style themselves, but these scripture-invoking urgencies have couched as characterful a trailer in anticipation of the long-awaited blockbuster as any urbanity could wish. Publication is needed – urgently: ‘Seek and you will find + Knock and open sesame – so I am yelling to you “OPEN UP!” I’m an oaf, you’re the word emperor, so do what the good book says: Suffer a fool gladly.’ The book of words is a public service, benefaction to the community: ‘stop hoarding the talents entrusted to you to share out. Feed your 5,000, with self-renewing fuel that belongs to everyone’. This is no academic study: ‘this gift is yours to give, ours to receive’. The governing metaphor is of ‘stewardship appointed of God’: ‘to administer the treasury departments of wealth, salvation, wisdom and knowledge’ (oeconomiam thesauri sui et diuitiarum, salutis, sapientiae et scientiae). The special focus is on encyclopedic ‘multi-tasking’: on the one hand ‘this grace of God is multiform’, and

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on the other ‘the faith measures as limbs making up one organism’. The operation at the heart of everything in creation and in the book is, exactly, comprehension through compart-mentalisation, or ‘division’: One and the same Spirit provides this comprehensive service, delivering individual portions by division, according to plan. haec omnia operatur unus atque idem Spiritus, diuidens singulis, prout uolt.

At the same time as risking assimilation of Isidore’s work to ‘divine creation and administration’ (sic itaque creator noster et dispensator cuncta moderatur), this outspoken pretend rant from Braulio next huffs and jests its mock-vulgar way toward installing his Archbishop atop the power-structure of their church: there’s ‘a foot, anyhow one of the less glorious body-parts, there’s a belly grumbling, ingesting, digesting, and . . . and at the top there is the head running the outfit’ (sitientibus . . . fame; pes; aluo; membra; inhonestiora membra; egerere; principatui capitis). All this brash hype and rudery selflessly unblocks the proper path of saintly reluctance. The vast tome must be prised from our author’s clutches without compromising his exemplary humility. Where it is OK for the lowly servant to push and puff, we shall find, Isidore can only deliver once he has no choice, when the Synod that is the purpose of his ministry is here, and only if he is meant to arrive, supposing he gets there in this life. But along the way, these meta- as well as para-textual preliminaries will have brokered a deal with publicity: Braulio’s picture of the Etymologies as already in a parlous state of neglect, damaged samizdats bootlegging abroad, even before they are finished and ready to satisfy an eagerly waiting world, busts through Christian reserve, supplying terms under which the steward can trade. This confessedly sorry half-baked project is part of a transaction in process, aetiologised as rooted in accessing God’s truth to the faithful, and inaugurated as an enterprise designed to require for its realisation participation on the part of editor, publisher and readership. The whole, ‘multiform’, Team Isidore. V Turns out, you see, next and only just in the nick of time, that Braulio’s letter found Isidore in his element, and in fact at the apex of his spell on earth, at the (Fourth, and supremely magnificent) Council of Toledo, which in truth he utterly dominated. He received Braulio’s deacon messenger plus message at court, and, buoyed up by his own New Testament motto

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(Romans 5.5: Hope does not fuddle through charity, which floods in our hearts, confundit . . . dif fusa), still hopes to see him again: there is good news and there is bad. The bad news is (1) that Isidore has been ‘too ill to correct Etymologies’ (codicem . . . inemendatum prae ualitudine) and (2) the King is not minded to prefer Braulio’s nominee. The good news is (2) that the King hasn’t yet made up his mind for sure, and (1) that Isidore is finally ‘coughing up the manuscript, in a clutch of manuscripts, posted en route’ (codicem Etymologiarum cum aliis codicibus de itinere transmisi). Always provided, that if in the middle of life, that providence means for him to ‘reach the fateful arena set for the Synod’ (si ad destinatum concilii locum peruenissem). Since said Council took place in 633, and Isidore was to die in 636 aged seventy-six, we may take it that this equable covernote, short and sweet as ever but at last allowed to be informative, definitively places the Etymologiae where they belong, among the Bishop’s entire oeuvre, blessed as the final culmination of his writing for Christendom. This is important to register. Authorship of dictionaries and encyclopedias, as of other monumental compositions, regularly construes as a special category of author-ity. It requires a long life of privileged prestige. Finishes off its servant and scribe. Embodies the sum of scholarly devotion and privilege. And as first reader, Braulio has been deliberately, even ponderously, conscripted to join in with clinching this crowning achievement, for, as we’ve seen, Isidore’s bargain with himself had been to ‘offer it’ to Braulio ‘for proofreading’ (ad emendandum . . . offerre), if Isidore made it to Toledo for the Council (to end all Councils: si ad destinatum concilii locum peruenissem). There, the assembled bishops of Spain were indeed imperiously instructed to establish seminaries in their cathedral cities on the model of the school at Seville where the boy Isidore had himself long ago worked through the liberal arts programme under his brother Leandro’s supervision.20 The Etymologiae address themselves, not just to Braulio’s Saragossan see, and to every other site of learning in the land, but to the promulgation of a national policy promoting classical education; and these introductory letters find their own caring idiom to intimate as much.21 Imprimatur. VI After this momentous prefatory correspondence, the one short sentence (mightily confusing many of the scribes before they even got started) of 20 21

See Canon 24 of the fourth Council of Toledo (Migne PL 84: 374). On Leandro: Navarra (1987). See Aherne (1966).

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Isidore’s (earlier: original?) dedication to King Sisebut, the Christianised Vizigoth dynast whose claim was to have unified Spain in partnership with its Church Fathers,22 need not, and does not, insist on its bearing on the book it heads. The point here must be to herald intrication of mundane politics and pastoral business with scholarly synthesis.23 As promised, we are told, find (enc.) one work of vast effort to realise the present regime within a seamless continuity with the world of classical antiquity. You don’t have to be a Goth to get it, but if you were it would plug you in, to the power of the written wor(l)ds of Latin: Here you are! Just the way I promised, I’ve launched a work on the origin of one thing and another, compiled from reading remembered from way back when, and at one point and another provided with commentary just the way it survives as penned in the classical style of Antiquity. en tibi, sicut pollicitus sum, misi opus de origine quarundam rerum ex ueteris lectionis recordatione collectum atque ita in quibusdam locis adnotatum, sicut extat conscriptum stilo maiorum.

Bp Braulio has already displaced for any reader, beyond any possibility of misrecognition, the modesty of Christian catachresis incumbent on his feted author. Through epistolarity, he serves to take readers of the scholarly tome in prospect behind the scenes, and to lead us back from the scene of writing out to the impact of the writing upon its world of readers. Intimacy and humility conscript us to live, re-live, ourselves the vocational devotion that powers this author’s authorisation of faith in his topic of topics: the sacred bond between text and church, word and world, man and God. Besides positioning the Etymologies at the apex and as the apogee of Isidore’s ministry, Braulio models, too, as the privileged first reader in whose wake we stumble and trail. For Braulio models an emphatically interventionist reader, one that we unordained (unappointed of Isidore) must, but can only, aspire to emulate. Reading the book is to be participatory, for no dictionary is ever done (God’s work goes on). Yet, after Braulio, these pages have been canonised (emend, and be damned). Samples of unfinishedness that we shall encounter in the text will compete with features of supplementation in the transmission: both sets of traces propose unfinishability in the 22 23

On Sisebut: Dom´ınguez del Val (1986) i: 327–30. Sisebut was dead well before Braulio got his hands on the Etymologiae (Lindsay (1911b) 51). But he was very much Isidore’s king, in a dynastic partnership that stretched back to the third Council of Toledo in 587, where King Reccared (accession in 586) ceremonially converted, with his queen, Baddo, from Arianism to Catholicism, midwifed by Leandro, bishop of Seville from 578, where he was succeeded by his brother Isidore in 599/600: Migne PL 84: 342–63. On the political harnessing of continuidad romana: Diesner (1978) 84–107.

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consciousness of the project; and they bind into its reception the imperative of to-be-finished fulfilment. Braulio embroils us all – Braulio gets you started. What is more (though Lindsay did not see fit to pass this on), Braulio himself hails Isidore’s entire polymathic library24 with the all-important if miniscule bio-bibliography of 637 ce,25 where he informs us that he, Braulio, was the one responsible, as part of his apostolic duty to perfect the chef d’oeuvre, for its division into ‘20 books’:26 The book of the Etymologiae is really enormous. It was given diacritical subheadings but not book divisions by Isidore. Because he created it at my request, for all that he himself left it short of perfection, I have split it into 20 volumes. This work suits all varieties of philosophy: anyone who reads it through in cumulative reflection, will deservedly be not undistinguished for factual knowledge of divinity and humanity both. Etymologiarum codicem nimia magnitudine, distinctum ab eo titulis, non libris; quem quia rogatu meo fecit, quamuis imperfectum ipse reliquerit, ego in uiginti libros diuisi. quod opus omnimodo/ae philosophiae conueniens quisquis crebra meditatione perlegerit, non ignotus diuinarum humanarumque rerum scientia merito erit.

After the dedication, Lindsay presents two tabular guides which he dubs INDEX LIBRORUM and CAPITULA LIBRORUM (‘Index of books’ and ‘The chapters of books’). The first of these lists of contents avows (as well as betrays) that it is not Isidore’s work (it presupposes and may refer to, or be, Braulio’s). Readers are given summary notice, book by book from One through Twenty, that ‘this page enables speedy answers to queries by pointing to the topics discussed by the book’s architect in each book’ (de quibus rebus in libris singulis conditor huius codicis disputauit): I. De Grammatica et Partibus eius. ... XX. De Mensis et Escis et Potibus et Vasculis eorum, de Vasis Vinariis, Aquariis et

Oleariis, Cocorum, Pistorum, et Luminariorum, de Lectis, Sellis et Vehiculis, Rusticis et Hortorum, sive De Instrumentis Equorum.

The second index is (neither Isidore’s nor Braulio’s, but Braulio’s successor Lindsay’s) confection – but re-made from the ancient (post-Braulio) paradosis: 24 25

26

Braulio’s encomium re-cycles Cicero’s puff for Varro (Ac. 1.9): Fontaine (1988) essay iii: 89 and n. 2. Migne PL 82:65–68 (cf. 81: 15–16). This hagiography, the Renotatio (originally appended to Isidore’s De uiris illustribus), was traditionally known as the Praenotatio librorum D. Isidori, cf. Fontaine (1959) 866. On Braulio’s editorial intervention: D´ıaz y D´ıaz (ed.) (2000) 177–80. On Braulio in Isidore’s circle: Dom´ınguez del Val (1986) i: 331–7.

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These book-chapters that I have compiled here appear in the codices, each at the outset of its book or part of book. Haec capitula librorum quae hic congessi apparent in codd. in initio sui quodque libri uel partis libri.

In this (relocated) articulation, the first and last books present thus: i. De disciplina et arte. ii. De septem liberalibus disciplinis. iii. De grammatica. iv. De partibus orationis. v. De uoce et litteris. vi. De syllabis. vii. De pedibus. viii. De accentibus. ix. De posituris. x. De notis sententiarum. [De notis uulgaribus et aliarum rerum.] xi. De orthographia. xii. De analogia. xiii. De etymologia. xiv. De glossis. xv. De differentiis. xvi. De barbarismo. xvii. De soloecismo. xviii. De ceteris uitiis. xix. De metaplasmis. xx. De schematibus.

xxi. De tropis. xxii. De prosa. xxiii. De metris. xxiv. De fabula. xxv. De historia. and thus: i. De mensis et escis. ii. De potu. iii. De uasis escariis. iv. De uasis potatoriis. v. De uasis uinariis et aquariis. vi. De uasis oleariis. vii. De uasis coquinariis et pistoriis. viii. De uasis repositoriis. ix. De uasis luminariorum. x. De lectis et sellis. xi. De uehiculis. xii. De reliquis quae in usu habentur. xiii. De instrumentis rusticis. xiv. De instrumentis hortorum. xv. De instrumentis equorum.

On the one hand, Isidore’s headings seem ‘to have rather designed 22 (or 24) books rather than [Braulio’s] 20’.27 But on the other, Lindsay emphasises ‘a great deal of confusion’ and ‘wide divergence’ in the placing of title-headings and large-scale ‘discrepancies in arrangement (as well as mixture of text)’, while ‘division of the whole work into ‘pars I’ (= books 1–10) and ‘pars II’ (= books 11–20) was a mere matter of convenience’ (for both the manuscripts and his own Oxford Classical Text).28 Yet closer scrutiny shows how the three-tier system of nested rubrics could function

27

28

Lindsay (1911b) 50. Did alphabetic reckoning feature in Braulio’s scheme? Fontaine ((1988) iv: 531 n. 25) cites Nonius and Gellius for compilations in twenty books. Did Isidore not begin his account DE MVNDO ET PARTIBVS with the words In hoc uero libello . . . (‘Well in this book . . .’, 13.1.1)? The rhyme of I, De Grammatica et Partibus eius with XI, De Homine et Partibus eius does flag a rewarding division between ‘the two halves’. Lindsay (1911b) 50–1: ‘More obscure are the traces of a division by triads’.

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more serviceably than may be apparent, and how robust it could prove in the teeth of turbulent transmission. To take the brass tacks of book 20 first, the initial book contents helpfully signals three subdivisions: the first groups ‘containers for eating and drinking’ together with ‘tables, food and drink’; these topics will correspond with headings i through iv at the start of book 20, and resolve easily into the five sub-headings that open paragraphs 1 through 5 of the text (separating ‘On vessels for eating from’, DE VASIS ESCARIIS, from ‘On vessels for drinking from’, DE VASIS POTATORIIS; our editions’ ‘20.iv–v’). The middle cluster then wraps up the other categories of specialised containers – six contents items, that shade into the two triads of: wine, water and oil; cooks’, bakers’ and luminaries’; five topic headings at the incipit of 20 and five matching paragraph sub-headings in the text, in both cases bracketing wine-and-water together, and then spoiling the heralded second trio by interposing ‘On vessels for serving food’ (DE VASIS REPOSITORIIS) (i.e. ‘XX.viii.’ and ‘XX.ix’, respectively) between their undifferentiated run of -ariis, -ariis, -ariis, -ariis, -oriis, and now -oriis, and their final odd-man-out (odd men out), lumin-ariorum. In both of book 20’s sub-systems, that is to say, the salient breaks of topic come after i–ii, and after ix/x, with a solid run of ‘On vessels’ (DE VASIS) from iii-ix/iv–x. Finally, the contents align the triplet ‘beds, chairs, carriages’, marking two sub-divisions of the last ‘[carriages for] countryside and for gardens’, before uncertainly appending ‘Horse equipment’ with a bizarre siue as well as its own would-be major paratactic de, as if to promise a fourth segment-in-one-bite. The actual text of book 20, however, knows better, offering two triads of its own, so that these final ‘horses’ complete instead three lots of ‘On implements’ (DE INSTRVMENTIS; viz. ‘countryside; gardens’ and horses’’), and ‘bedsand-chairs’ snuggle up, off-set by ‘carriages’, and a catch-all round-up of miscellanea: ‘Everything else that serves a use’ (DE RELIQVIS QVAE IN VSV HABENTVR).29 Now, whether the team who produced this triple search engine saw this no-nonsense book of ‘kit’ as a single diagrammatic suite structured more or less seductively by Isidore is (I admit) not entirely clear. But this is how that story will go: first the dining table traces its ware back out to the kitchen, bakehouse, cupboards and stores, and suppliers of light. Next the remaining articles of the household furniture line up – out onto the street, where wheels turn them into conveyances, before walking-sticks become 29

Confine reading Isidore to the list of contents, and all you can see will be: ‘The last books are curious because of the odd pairings of their contents’ (Conte (1994) 721).

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clubs, clubs crowbars, and out tumble scissors, razors, combs and curlers, with key, chain, and clock to scrape the barrel. Barbers, locks on doors, sundials belong back there, but we shall travel on, out of town, to plough and dig and prune and harrow, once on the farm, twice in the (market-) garden; harness, rein, and spur our horse off into the sunset . . . So it is that, as a reference machine, Etymologies can lead its users into the right neck of the woods, so long as they can pick the right rubric from the Contents; finding the right page by coordinating start-of-book heading with sub-head paragraphing within the text leaves us to make what we can of the more-or-less solid wall of items crammed into the space allotted to the topic. And yet, all the while, consultation this way virtually debars the user from perceiving any sense of logic or meaningful composition to the particular string of items consulted. Indeed a satisfied customer need never even notice whether a cluster of material chosen for thematic treatment has been exhaustively or sparsely, ludicrously, robotically, or respectfully treated: the quality and modality of the Thesaurus escape attention – and even notice. Which user will pause to reckon whether the patch of the moment is the product of negligence or intelligence? Will any frustrated user play lucky dip, get burned off by impatience with the Contents, blame the manual for missing the right hookline – but never prove the wordhoard’s blindspot? Does Isidore exude perspective or pilot automatism? Book 20 prompts just such questions: it invites us to play ‘spot the missing item’. As if the completeness of an inventory must inhere in the Etymologies project. As if that is the driving teleology that constitutes the scheme. The presumption soon fades once you (re)turn to book 1. Here, the Contents list gives a bare title: ‘On Grammar’, plus the promise of complexity, ‘& its Parts’ (DE GRAMMATICA ET PARTIBVS EIVS). Twenty-five headings mostly spit out one word subjects, while the ad loc. sub-headings tot up to forty-four entries. Contents’ minimalesque cues skip those master categories of the whole enterprise, ‘discipline’ and ‘art’, which dominate the entr´ee paragraph (1.1), and entirely suppresses the grand parade of the ‘Seven Liberal Disciplines [or Arts]’ that launches the first three or four books ahead.30 True, in appropriating the lemmata for I.iii–iv/I.v–vi, ‘On Grammar . . . On the parts of rhetoric’ (DE GRAMMATICA . . . DE PARTIBVS ORATIONIS), Contents does home on the organising categories of the book, viz. the count of thirty topics of grammar (1.5.4).31 By contrast, 30 31

After the holy programme of Cassiod. Inst. 2, preface: see O’Donnell (1979). Lindsay’s Oxford Classical Text muddles its punctuation here: id est, partes orationis octo: must be corrected to id est: partes orationis octo, for the line-up of topics to reach that total of thirty (8 + 22).

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however, headings and sub-headings will diverge – in order to cue location of each paragraph as they arrive. Thus the heading I.iv subsumes the various ‘Parts of Speech’ it trumpets, where sub-headings flag them up in bold as I.vi + vii–xv. Similarly, the manuscripts are content either to gather a run of entries on symbols used in various cultural arenas, or to run a double entry plus ‘et cetera’ formula (I.x), where(as) the paragraphs themselves feature a suite of six specified loci for them (I.xxi–xxvi). Finally, four paragraphs on aspects of ‘history’ close the book, where the book headings in most manuscripts leave just the one entry: ‘On History’ (I.xli–xliv vs I.xxv). Otherwise, neither system makes the slightest attempt to interlink, subjoin, or relate any of the categories employed, with a single exception where ‘On other vices’ (DE CETERIS VITIIS, I.xviii) makes an exegetic incision missing from ‘On vices’ (DE VITIIS, I.xxxiv).32 Yet Grammar makes a quintessentially pre-fabricated opening tableau, told and re-told down the centuries without the slightest concern to administer etymology as anything more than one incidental (sub-?)topic tucked away for its halfpage meed of glory in its place. Grammar takes Isidore fifty-eight OCT pages, where book 20 musters just twenty-six. If we juxtapose beginning and ending this way, the question will obtrude: does Etymologiae earn its perfunctory wind-down by having revved up at the outset? If Isidore isn’t plain stuck for stirringly materialist material in 20,33 have his earlier heroics from 20 on eliminated the need – does he coast on through, once readers are trained to work with, even for, him? Or is the contrast down to textual morphing in tandem with the contours of existence, and our apprehension of it – a matter of epistemontics, as words will twine worlds as the world (un)ravels through words? Only a reading open to telling narrative self-transmutation can even contemplate compositional strategy in the trek from 1 to 20, front to back. Yet finding Creation in horse trappings must

32 33

The decision to expound the alphabet (litterae communes, litterae Latinae) before starting on Grammar spoiled at once the count-up and the first topic(s) after the Eight Parts of Speech, which appear(s) as De uoce et litteris in the heading, as DE LITTERIS APVD GRAMMATICOS in the sub-heading, but as uox articulata, littera in the diuisio at 1.5.4: a chunk of the paradosis drops the paragraph(s), one manuscript orphans the bare title, another remarks iam in principio huius operis disputatum est; otherwise, 1.15 appears as the skeletal jotting: quot sint articulatae uoces. et dicta littera quasi legitera, eo quod legentibus iter praebeat uel in legendo iteretur (which resumes 1.3.4, litterae autem dictae quasi legiterae, quod iter legentibus praestent, uel quod in legendo iterentur. This is a price paid for disrupting Donatus’ grammar (flagged at 1.6.1), partly in line with the hint in Cassiod. Inst. 2.1.2: de uoce articulata–de littera–de syllaba–de pedibus–de posituris siue distinctionibus–et iterum de partibus orationis VIII–de schematibus–de etymologiis–de orthographia. DE SOLOECISMO (I.xvii) vs DE SOLOECISMIS (I.xxxiii) helps set up this divergence. Cf. esp. Fontaine (1959) 96 n. 29, on the Varronian antiquarianism of ‘material culture’ in book 20.

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literally and logically depend on learning to learn through ‘grammatical’ competence how to find out anything. As Curtius plainly saw, etymology is harnessed to different work as Isidore construes the grammar of the universe. And in the process, etymology unfolds to disclose eventually all-embracing semiotic power: obiter, sequencing and starring of topics process a multi-track adventure of progressively re-programmed induction into a multi-verse design where totalised wholeness is set as the product of models of partitioning, aggregation and multiplication. Learning (to understanding and appreciate) how heterogeneous systems (can, and in this vision, do) interact to attain holism for their product is the prize promised by reading – reading Isidore. My proposal is that we should track the Etymologiae in its main outline, resisting the peremptory intercession of the apparatus of headings, as so many obstacles and deterrents to reading, and instead paying them respect only where they point up exegetic continuity, proportion, or direction. If intruded titling (red ink and capital letters) aims to boss the text, it is by the same token easy to finesse from reading. There are, for sure, neither etymologies nor reference to etymology to be found anywhere in the paratext.34 Need it be said, such a project practises contempt for facile diagnosis of authorial patchwork, autopilot somnambulation, or mindless compilation. First things first (that trauma of The Encyclopedia), digest Isidore’s opening gambit. Etymologiae starts as it will continue, prefacing a block of material from the principal proximate precursor with a tag from one of the great Church Fathers: here, at 1.1.1, Cassiodorus primed with Augustine. (Jerome will be the other staple supplier of inspirational mottoes).35 We are here to learn, to learn learning, plenary source of knowledge: as we discover, ‘discipline’ (disciplina) derives from discere (‘to learn’; which in turn derives from scire, ‘to know) + plena (‘complete’). There is, on the other hand, also an ‘art’ to this, encapsulated, so Isidore at once explains, in a bilingual set of word-truths which knot together ‘art’ with its constitutive rules and regulations, and with knowledge as a ‘virtue’ (‘ard-and-fast rules’: in Latin artis praeceptis regulisque, and aret¯e, a Greek term, he claims, for ‘knowledge’).36 We are now under starter’s orders for knowledge: first 34 35

36

Excluding, as noted, the first of Isidore’s letters [in the augmented ‘Spanish’ paradosis]. At a superstructural level, Augustine and Jerome (esp. De doctrina Christiana 2; e.g., Epistulae 33) gave Isidore the licence to build his generous encyclopedia of mundane knowledge derived from the order of pagan civilisation (cf. Fontaine esp. (1959) 32, (1988) v: 79). On 1.1: Fontaine (1959) 51–2; on 1.2.1: ibid. esp. 52 n. 4.

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differentiated, as ‘things that cannot, vs. things that can, be otherwise than they are’ – matters of truth, and of likely-true opinion;37 and then calibrated, as our educational programme is at once set to multiply sevenfold disciplines: the Liberal Arts. This syllabus will lay down hard-and-fast rules within which to exercise free conjecture: these standing orders for learning the art of learning the arts are set to run the show, and they will go the distance. Rigorously regulated formatting controls and patrols the course set for our craft to navigate best we can. Isidore’s own art is to discipline his representation of each of the domains of human existence: Etymological Creation will customise the ‘lettering’ that writes each territory differently. From Grammar to Garden Tools, all the way, from A to Z. As ever with works of reference, users must begin as advanced users. And the work of reference that uses language – script, text, index systematics – to peddle linguistic theory is bound to presuppose meta-level interpretative engagement with the interpretative analyses offered over the shoulders of the hypothetical classmates envisaged as here and now learning their lessons in school – ‘right away’, and ‘later’ (iam . . . post . . .).38 Etymologies would get them to learn in an orderly fashion, but does get us to appreciate the methodology that produces order, knowledge of knowledge. We must see the letter as the origin that originates everything – everything that can be spelled out in the Origins39 – and look within language for truth-production through language. Specifically, the significance of Isidore’s introductory tour of the alphabet is to instate indelibly the grand historical narrative of the Christian West as the field of operations for his hermeneutics. Take Cassiodorus, the sixth-century Italian intellectual and founding father. He had been intent in his guide to monastic education, the Institutiones, on subordinating the Liberal Arts to masterminding an ascesis for religious devotion. Spent much of book 1 warning the brethren not to over-rate book 2 at the expense of the spirit, however faith may depend on reverence through (and so, necessarily, for) books. His book 2 started by consecrating book 1 as thirty-three chapters set to stand for the Lord’s years spent on earth, whereas the cursory dash through the seven Arts will mimic the weekly cycle rolling round till world’s end. Isidore, by contrast, 37 38

39

This initiatory differentia, sheltered by ascription to ‘Plato and Aristotle’, does not figure in Isidore’s work On Differences; it transcribes Cassiod., Inst. 2.20. Hadot (1997), esp. 28–32, insists that texts on the Liberal Arts were ‘philosophical’ in nature, not for classroom use. Arguably, ‘educational theory’ even grounds ‘Philosophy’ within the ministry of an Isidore. Cf. Amsler (1989) 147–8, ‘The grammatical model’.

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memorably implants the indelible lesson that letters were invented as aidesm´emoire. Existence covers too wide a range for any human memory to hold all there is to learn. Called letters, for short, mind – really, they are legiters because readers must ‘leg it, or let’s iterate’ (quasi leg-iterae, quod iter legentibus praestent, uel quod in legendo iterentur, 1.3.3).40 Isidore’s journey of reading re-traces the legendary itinerary of writing from Latin back through Greek to Hebrew, ‘mother of all tongues and letters’, in the age-old phylogenetic metaphor for primitive classification (1.3.4). Thence the sequence Aleph -> alpha -> A launches alphabet sets of 22, 24, 23 signs, and these represent a first lesson in what lessons are: it is put before us that letters are, precisely, primary building-blocks, fit to found the elemental power that inheres in elementary education. Here is the grounding of Western Civilisation as an entirety. A diffusionist story triple-tracks colonisation through Moses and Abraham; then Isis, Cadmus and supplementation by Palamedes, Simonides, Pythagoras; so to Latin, and the nymph Carmentis . . . as Isidore steers us toward his most fundamental proposition concerning his chosen field for disciplined performances of the etymologist’s art. As his net of categories tries to catch the essential properties of the alphabetic, we find: ‘nature dealt the sonority; volition accounts for positionality’ (1.4.17). Which is to say, that there is nothing to interpret about the constitutive nature of vowel vs. consonant, etc. etc., whereas there is always a story there for us to figure out from the names given to letters by acts of will, such as the motivated ‘names and shapes’ of letters. Our first lesson makes history emerge as the efficient logonomy for the organisation and delimitation of linguistic knowledge. Etymologies thus promises to be a book about book-culture as medium for considering, tracking, discussing, civilisation, in so far as its genesis is open to its own inspection. As such it constitutes (a) theory – about theorisation. Indeed Grammar claims its place at the head of the educational programme that heads Etymologies by imposing its theory. The text soon crawls with gerundives and gerunds, ensuring that writing is hedged around with traps and pitfalls, in a world where ‘we’ (nos) have departed very slightly from ‘people of old’ (ueteres) in a battle for validation that engaged even the ‘Greats of Antiquity’ (antiqui).41 Eight modes of Analogy come to our rescue with rules for generating correctness – but they ‘don’t always apply’ 40 41

This traditional grammarians’ lore was culled by Isidore from Diom. Ars grammatica (Maltby (1991) 343, s.v. littera). For Isidore and ‘Late Latin’ cf. Maltby (1999), Banniard (1992) 182–25; for Cassiodorus’ De orthographia, see Keil (1857–80) VII: 126–210.

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(1.28.4, sed hoc non semper). Rule-bound as it may be, grammatical orthodoxy doesn’t come so easy. And, note, this is the context where Etymology nests within Etymologies.42 That is to say, in the ‘narrative’ of Bildung that the book unrolls, here is a teletechnology to get us, wherever we may find ourselves, into writing right.43 Drill takes us on page by page through the traditional seven-branched curriculum, marooning us in interstellar overdrive across the universe as Astronomy leaves us with the sting in its trail: school, we learn on graduation, can warp as well as weave, for these heavens open into a fearful starburst of drubbing for the pagan civilisation that taught the teaching of all this integrated progressive curriculum (3.71.22–36): it was superstitious vanity, not mathematical science, that added monstrous figments to the number of stars. Astrology! Ye gods! So to Medicine, positioned as the supplementary subject. At the death here we learn that a doctor must have been through the full heptadic syllabus, and we need telling why, taking each in turn from Grammar through in last place of all to Astronomy, too (4.13.4). ‘Courses on the mind; course on the body’: check (4.13.5). But we are not yet done with reading up on reading, wherever it takes readers and reading. Our first port of call, now that we have mastered college education, is the institution of Law. Which appears in the form of a combinatoire of religious-cum-social history, where the story of human civilisation is drummed in. Chronology ensues, not just an educational worry, but a writing project, climaxing with a fresh genre of ‘diagrammatic’ text that showcases the power of tabular writing to order knowledge: the laws of Chronography (De descriptione temporum). This manifests as a spectacular excursus in note-form, capturing the six Ages of the World, from the Creation to our Sixth Age (5.39).44 Readers here run through the blessings of the trinity of Hebrew-GreekRoman culture: they alone have the gift of letters – of the grounding in Grammar that world culture has taught Isidore to teach us. Which is where 42

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This chapter has, very likely, been read more intently than the whole of the rest of Etymologiae put together: see esp. Codo˜ner (1994), rigorously excavating the ‘theory’ discoverable in 1.29; cf. Fontaine (1988) essays iv, v, x, Magall´on Garc´ıa (1996) 277–87. For Isidoran etymology within ancient etymology, cf. Opelt (1965), Fontaine (1988) essay xi, Fresina (1991), and best of all Magall´on Garc´ıa (1996). In the Donatan list of topics posted in Cassiodorus’ summary, schemata precede the climactic pairing of etymology and orthography (Inst. 2.1.2). The insert bodily re-cycles Isidore’s Chronica mundi (Migne PL 83: 1017–58), dated for Sisebut in 615/6, or 626 for King Svinthila.

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we came in (5.39.9–11 ∼ 1.3.4–6, 1.4.1, with the Latin word litterae embracing ‘literacy, literature, and letter(s)): Hebrews began literacy . . . Cadmus gave Greece literacy . . . Carmentis discovered Latin letters. Hebraei litteras habere coeperunt . . . Cadmus litteras Graecis dedit . . . Carmentis Latinas litteras repperit.

The vista of History lifts our schooling to a still higher level, and we abide with the painstakingly revealed truth of the eternal Bible and the universal Church until . . . we subside into gushing pagan nonsense in the course of book 8. By then we shall be educated ready to attune correctly to maps of mundanity to come. We get there through contextualising the Bible as itself a library, an archive, a history; and the history of its writing is another, sacred, way to write the history of the chain between Moses to Christendom. Church history then enshrines every facet of the institution, not least the Council decisions that inform and stabilise every word of the Etymologies – and all the doctrines that council covenants will ever authorise, from the delegates at Toledo onwards (6.16.5, 10):45 Among the rest of the councils, there are 4 worshipful synods that enfold the whole of primary Faith, just like the 4 gospels, or the same count of rivers of Paradise. . . . These are the 4 prime Councils, most fully preaching the orthodox Faith; but any Councils that are held as sanctioned by the Holy Fathers filled with the spirit of God, after this quartet’s authorization, they abide fortified by all strength, and their Proceedings are comprehended in the storehouse of this very Thesaurus. inter cetera autem concilia quattuor esse uenerabiles synodos, quae totam principaliter fidem complectunt, quasi quattuor euangelia, uel totidem paradisi flumina. . . . haec sunt quattuor synodi principales, fidei doctrinam plenissime praedicantes; sed et si qua sunt concilia quae sancti Patres spiritu Dei pleni sanxerunt, post istorum quattuor auctoritatem omni manent stabilita uigore, quorum gesta in hoc opere condita continentur.

Isidore’s hymn of praise to God, book 7, begins from the role of Hebrew language, from Amen and Hosanna, in inaugurating all subsequent acts of worship. To catalogue ‘God, the Angels, the Saints’ is to narrate, describe/prescribe, and do homage. And to know God is to read another book. More Jerome, most erudite multilingual and first translator of Hebrew 45

A complete account of all the general councils of Christendom, area by area across the Mediterranean from Greece to ultimate Spain, is given as part of the Collectio Canonum S. Isidoro Hispalensi Ascripta (at Migne PL 84).

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names to Latin.46 The Catholic Church operates in a hermeneutic world that straddles both Greek interpretation of Hebrew foundations and Christian re-orientation and Latin interpretation of both prior traditions, beliefs and languages. It is one unified faith, that has spread worldwide (8.1.1). Once our education in the faith is far advanced, we are risked to exposure to the fully inspected version of the horror show of human folly, as preserved for memory in the books of every school, library and curriculum throughout Isidore’s empire of Latin. Ready or not, time to read rotten Rome. Via the covens of pagan philosophy to the world of idolatry, demons, devilry, Satan, Antichrist, Baal, Beelzebub, Belial, Behemoth, Leviathan . . . Where, too, poets fake allegorised Nature – but only to doll the spooks up with metaphor, though their stories admit that the gods involved are notoriously bankrupt and disgraced (8.11.29):47 Empty space for fictional folly opens up in the absence of Truth. omnino enim fingendi locus uacat, ubi ueritas abest.

Take a deep breath and plunge into Olympus: the flood of absurdities whoops it up to climax the book. There’s Rome and then there’s Rome, and catholic schools must learn the difference. Protected by religion, we can go track the (hi)story of humanity. The founding postulate will be that the trio of Sacred Tongues (Hebrew-GreekLatin) give intelligible access to the story (9.1.3 using local terminology, a system involving iugera will be inherently reliable for us’.45 The desire for stability and systematisation of measures unsurprisingly tends to privilege Roman standards, but is compounded with the recognition of local realities and local networks of consensus: ‘each region follows its own practice so that a trustworthy method can be agreed upon’.46 In general, ‘we must watch out different regions in case we seem to be doing something unusual. For our profession

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E.g., Frontinus, De limitibus 10.16–25 (ed. and Engl. tr. Campbell (2000)); Hyginus 1, De condicionibus agrorum 88.22–90.9 (Campbell); Hyginus 2, Constitutio limitum 136.28–38 (Campbell); Balbus, Expositio et ratio omnium formarum 204.19 (Campbell); Deformatio 240.15–22 (Campbell); De mensuris agrorum 270.10–34 (Campbell); De agris 272.22–5 (Campbell); Marcus Nipsus, Podismus 296.4–26 (ed. F. Blume, K. Lachmann, A. Rudorff, Gromatici veteres, Berlin: Reimer 1848–52); Mensurarum genera 339.1–340.8 (Blume); De mensuris 371.1–376.13 (Blume); [Boethius], Demonstratio artis geometricae 407.1–408.2 (Blume). De mensuris agrorum, Mensurarum genera, De mensuris and the pseudo-Boethius would warrant further study, but, given their late date, not as part of this paper. All quotations from Campbell’s edition reproduce his translation. For Frontinus, see Alice K¨onig’s chapter in this volume. Hyginus 1, De condicionibus agrorum 88.23–90.12, especially 88.25–32. Cf. also ibid. 96.23–24 (Campbell). Hyginus 1, De generibus controversiarum 92.24–25. See also Ordines finitionum. Latinus et Mysrontius togati Augustorum auctores. De locis suburbanis vel diversis itineribus pergentium in suas regiones 254.13: ‘In many lands trust (fides) is required in different markers’ (Campbell).

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will retain its integrity if we also conduct our investigations principally according to the practice of the region’.47 Sometimes the similarities with Maecianus’ small treatise are striking, for example when Siculus Flaccus talks about subdivision of the main Roman unit of measurement for land areas: ‘Centuriae do not contain 200 iugera in all regions. For in some we find 210, in others 240. So this matter also will have to be carefully examined, since it follows that limites will not be of an equal length between the boundary stones if centuriae have more than 200 iugera. For example, if a centuria has 240 iugera, it follows that there will be 24 actus from stone to stone along one limes, . . . and 20 actus along the other . . . I have discovered that in some lands that had been divided, although the centuriae contained 200 iugera, they had not been given equal lengths of 20 actus between the marker stones, along the limites. In the territory of Beneventum there are 25 actus along the decumani, and 16 along the kardines. Nevertheless, 200 iugera are enclosed by this type of measurement, but square centuriae are not thereby produced’.48 As in the case of the as, there can be various subdivisions, and they can be related to the passage of time or political events in certain regions: the surveyor, the administrator and, by extension, the emperor have to be aware of these fluctuations in the relations between things and measures. Balbus’ treatise The description and account for all shapes (Expositio et ratio omnium formarum) is again a foil to the Distributio. Its declared aim is to set out the basics of the surveying profession, starting from measurements, i.e., ‘anything that is defined by weight, capacity or by judgement’, although Balbus is thinking essentially of measures of length.49 He proceeds to expound the twelve names of the measurements in use, and some of their subdivisions: for instance, a sextans, also called dodrans, encompasses three palmi, nine unciae and twelve digiti. The objects of Balbus’ account start in a two-dimensional world, as it were, and expand into further dimensions: the ‘concave square foot’ (pes quadratus concavus), for instance, ‘has the capacity of an amphora of three modii’.50 In fact, it is when explaining this expansion that he invokes the real world behind the intricate web of names, equivalences and subdivisions: ‘Measurements are taken in three ways, by length, by breadth, and by height. That is, a straight line, a plane figure, 47

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Hyginus 1, De generibus controversiarum 94.25–7. Cf. also Siculus Flaccus, De condicionibus agrorum 104.34–106.13, 17–18, 108.20–21, 26–27, 114.34; Agennius Urbicus, De controversiis agrorum 20.16–21, 30.31–33, 34.19–21, 36.11–12, 40.4–6, 42.10–13 (Campbell). Siculus Flaccus, De condicionibus agrorum 126.6–17 (Campbell). Balbus, Expositio 206.5–6 (Campbell). Balbus, Expositio 206.8–27, in particular 27 (Campbell).

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and a solid figure. A straight (line) is where we measure the length without the breadth, for example, lines, porticos, running-tracks, length in miles, the length of rivers, and similar things. A plane (planum) is what the Greeks call epipedon; we refer to “level feet” (pedes constrati).’51 A correspondence is established between a thing (a river), the geometrical representation of that thing (a straight line) and what we call that representation (the name of the measurement, in Latin or Greek). Whereas we cannot really manipulate the real thing at will, we can operate on its representations, especially on the measurement, which can be further ordered according to divisions and correspondences. This aspect becomes crucial in the ‘taming’ of wild territories, which are subsumed, if only in an imperfect and approximate way, under a geometrical representation – are inscribed in the various senses we have given this word – and thus domesticated and made part of the empire. Finally, we have archaeological and epigraphic evidence on the regulation of weights and measures.52 One of the duties of the official known as an aedile was to inspect weights and measures in use in a market to prevent frauds, and it is well known that officially approved weights and measures had to be used in cities across the Empire: this is testified by archaeological finds of measuring tables (mensae ponderariae) in many marketplaces,53 by inscriptions54 and by legal rescripts such as the following: ‘If a seller or a 51 52

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Balbus, Expositio 206.34–7 (Campbell). A further category of metrological texts is papyri dealing with units of measurement, including monetary units. E.g., PSI 763 (first century bce, provenance unknown); PLond. 2.265 (first century ce, ed. F. G. Kenyon, London: British Museum Publications 1898); POxy. 9 verso, 669, 3455–60 (ranging from the first to the fourth century ce); PRyl. 64, 538 (second to fourth century ce); PVindob. G 26012 (third to fourth century ce) in Sijpesteijn (1980). See also Boyaval (1971) and Pintaudi and Sijpestijn (1989) 114–15, relative to Ammonios’ notebook, Louvre MNE 911, probably sixth century. The Distributio often shares with them a didactic approach, the familiar tone, the frequent direct appeals to the reader in the second person singular, the exhortations to ‘say’ or ‘write’, as a sort of exercise after the author has shown the reader how to do something. Interestingly, some of the techniques of subdivision found in the Distributio had been in use since ancient Egyptian times. As is well known, Egyptian arithmetic used parts (what we would today call fractions) of the type 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 and so on, the only exception being 2/3. This also meant that each part which was not 2/3 and did not have one as a denominator had to be expressed in terms of the sum of ‘recognised’ fractions. For instance, 3/5 was denoted by 1/2 plus 1/10, but could also be denoted by 1/5 plus 1/5 plus 1/5. As in the case of Maecianus’ ‘unequal’ subdivision of the as, there were several alternative sequences for each fraction, some of which seem to have been preferred to others. Part of the calculator’s skill, and thus of the training he received, consisted in doing these sums and in choosing from among the many alternatives the one best suited to the purpose, see Gillings (1972) 45–50; Harrauer and Sijpesteijn (1985) 151–64. See Frayn (1993) 108–14, 123; Corti (2001), both with further references. Particularly interesting is the mensa ponderaria from Pompeii (CIL 10.793), which is inscribed with Latin indications of measures and weights but still shows traces of the previous, Oscan, measures, which have been erased. E.g., CIL 9.2854 (from Histonium in Puglia, no date given); CIL 10.6017 (Minturno, ca. ce 40); CIL 11.6375 (Pesaro, no date given) – all three refer to the supervision of metrological standards in

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buyer tampers with the publicly agreed measurements of wine, corn, or anything else, or deceives with malicious intention, he is sentenced to a fine double the value of the thing in question; and it was decreed by the deified Hadrian that those who had falsified weights or measures should be exiled to an island’.55 In sum, the Distributio can be seen against a wider background of metrological texts and indeed objects: it is part of a strong interest in standardisation, which I take to mean establishing a stable connection between thing and measure. Once a standard is set in place, the universe of inscription devices can be considered self-sufficient and self-referential, reality with its messiness and disorder can be black-boxed, information can be effectively stored, communicated and transported. The process is not simple, and is never completely successful: it always appears to be the fruit of negotiations between Rome’s present and her eventful past, and between the different cultures present within the empire and the allegedly dominant one. th e treatise in a legal context Another interesting context for the Distributio is offered by contemporary legal literature. Hadrian and Antoninus Pius gave great importance to overhauling the bureaucracy, and reorganising jurisprudence. Maecianus’ experience both as administrator and as jurist puts him in a privileged position as observer and participant in this process. Unfortunately, his own contributions to the law are no longer extant in their original form, having been selected and collected in Justinian’s Digest.56 Some fragments are, however, rather revealing. In one of them, Maecianus refers to the rationale (ratio) underlying a decision: ‘Slaves who are pre-adolescent are excepted . . . But the legate Trebius Germanus ordered even a pre-adolescent to be executed, and yet not without reason’. This has been seen as an appeal to the common ‘principle’ or even ‘rationality’ at the basis of law and administration, which is held to be more cogent than rules explicitly laid down.57 Again, Maecianus wrote on the lex Falcidia, which granted free

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terms of aequitas. For an example from the Greek world cf. IG V, 1.1156 (from Gythium in Laconia, second century ce). Modestinus (third century ce) in Dig., 48.10.32. See also Paul (early third century ce) in Dig. 4.3.3 and Ulpian (early third century ce) in Dig. 19.1.32 on using false weights. See, e.g., Dig. 29.5.14; 32.9; 32.11.2; 32.11.15; 32.13; 32.15; 32.17; 35.1.86; 35.1.91; 35.2.28; 35.2.30; 35.2.32; 37.14.17; 40.5.42. Dig. 29.5.14. See Fanizza (1982) 115–17. Scarano Ussani (1987) 34–5, 114, sees a foreshadowing of Salvio Giuliano’s teachings, in their turn based on the notion of common interest and aimed at maintaining social and political order.

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power to dispose by bequest of up to three quarters of one’s substance, thus: ‘Suppose that Titius’s share is reduced in a legacy of twenty through the Falcidian law, Titius himself being charged to give five to Seius; . . . a proportional reduction is to be made in Seius’s five comparable to that in Titius’s twenty. This decision is both more just and more reasonable.’58 A slightly different approach is revealed in another fragment, on the Rhodian law of jettison: ‘Volusius Maecianus, From the Rhodian Law: Petition of Eudaemon of Nicomedia to the Emperor Antoninus: “Antoninus, Ruler and Lord, we were shipwrecked in Icaria and robbed by the people of the Cyclades”. Antoninus replied to Eudaemon: “I am master of the world, but the law of the sea must be judged according to the sea law of the Rhodians when our own law does not contradict it”.’59 Finally, on the topic of money, Maecianus, again commenting on the Falcidian law, deals with the complications of legacies and bequests in cases where a bequest has been specified in kind or in weight, number or measurement (as in ‘three talents of silver’, rather than ‘the silver which I have in the warehouse’), and what happens when the goods become damaged before the heirs come into them. The question, indirectly, is again about the dialectic between pecunia, a valuable body, and counted (‘numerata’) pecunia: not just ‘coined’ money but (to stretch the sense) valuables that have been expressed ‘by weight, number and measuring’ (pondere numero mensura).60 Maecianus’ fragments encapsulate a number of questions that were being debated in second-century law. One is the ontological status of money, and how that affects everyday transactions. For example, Gaius considers the case of whether, in a sale, the price agreed must be in counted money (pecunia numerata) or can be in other items, such as a slave, a piece of land or a toga. Gaius’ teachers thought that it could, because they thought that since time immemorial (and Homer is quoted in Greek to this effect) an exchange (permutatio) is a sale. The authorities of Proculus say, however, that exchange and sale are different: ‘In particular, they think it impossible in an exchange of goods to determine which thing has been sold and which given as price; they see it as absurd, again, that each thing should be regarded as both sold and paid as the price’.61 The question, it seems to me, revolves around whether ‘counted pecunia’ is the only stable way to effect a transaction. According to the second opinion, the lack of a measure throws the whole process into confusion. Pecunia by itself is disorderly and 58 59 60

Dig. 35.2.32. Dig. 14.2.9. The central passage can also be translated: ‘I am master of the world, but the law is mistress of the sea’; cf. Manfredini (1983). 61 Gai., Inst. 3.141. Dig. 35.2.30.3–5, from book 8 of Maecianus’ Fideicommissa.

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difficult to manage; its numerical stand-in has, in a sense, become more real than the real thing. But we should not forget that there are contrasting opinions here. A remarkable passage by Paul (late second to early third century ce) states the terms of the question even more explicitly: ‘Buying and selling started from exchange. Once in fact there was no coined money (nummus) and it did not happen that one thing was called “wares” and the other “price” . . . But since it did not always and easily happen that when you had something which I wanted, I, for my part, had something that you were willing to accept, a material was chosen, the official and permanent assessment of whose value would remedy the problems in exchanges thanks to the uniformity of quantity. That material, struck with an official figure, demonstrates its utility and dominion not so much on the basis of its substance as of its quantity, so that no longer are the things exchanged both called wares but one of them is termed the price’ (emphasis added).62 The fact that money now has a value that depends not on its substance, but on a convention, ratified by the official figure struck on it, is the result of what we have called an inscription process. Pecunia numerata has almost become the reality by this time, and the jurists, including Maecianus, are engaged in reconstructing the genealogy of their present situation. In practice, a lot of the money that the Distributio discusses only existed in the form of signs and names. It has been observed that small units of currency would have been little used in antiquity because the as ‘would have been adequate for many of the purchases of everyday life’.63 A cursory look at what we know of actual prices from the Roman Empire reveals, in the East, figures of 1/24 of a denarius and 1/48 of a denarius for bread.64 The graffiti in Pompeii mention uncia and semiuncia, even though the context seems jocular,65 more frequently semisses66 and most frequently of all asses. Often there are numbers, or even itemised bills, with no indication of what unit is being referred to. A couple of inscriptions67 might have the symbol for scrupulus. There are also occurrences of what could be a sicilicus, and perhaps of quadrans. One could debate how representative these scattered testimonies are, and how tentative our reading of currency symbols, but overall there does seem to be a mismatch between the small bronze that may have been in circulation in antiquity and our finds of small bronze, a gap 62 63 66 67

Dig. 18.1.1 (Paul Edict 33). Paul continues with a discussion which is almost identical to the one in Gaius, Inst. 3.141, and ends up siding with Proculus’ school. 64 Sperber (1974) 118–19. 65 CIL 4.4227. Howgego (1992) 19. E.g., CIL 4.8561, 4.8565, 4.8566, 4.8789, 4.8968 (in Greek with price in Latin). CIL 4.2029, 4.2030.

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wider than in the case of silver and gold coinage. This is hardly surprising, if we consider that smaller coins are found as isolated and casual finds rather than as part of hoards. Their lesser value means that they would not have been treasured, and not actively sought if lost.68 Even providing for these accidents of survival, if one examines the distribution of Roman bronze coins in the Western Empire from 81 to 192 ce, the presence of ‘small bronze’ (anything smaller than asses, mostly quadrantes and a few semisses) is negligible. The quadrans has been found rather sporadically, more on Italian sites than in the northern provinces. The only surviving examples of semuncia, quartuncia, sextans, triens, quincunx, and bes coins date from the third or second century bce.69 Overall, the production of asses declines and that of sesterces increases from the first to the second century ce. By Trajan’s time, the smaller coins (nothing smaller than quadrantes in any case) may have disappeared because of inflation. In the Eastern coinage, there are more often smaller coins (obol and smaller, down to chalkos), but even then, at least in the case of Egypt, the frequency of the smaller bronze coins seems to decline from around the time of Hadrian.70 The obol seems to have been the smallest unit actually used in tax receipts and private accounts in Egypt, but there is also second-century evidence from Karanis that a very small unit, the dichalcon, was in use in tax receipts and ledgers, probably as an accounting device.71 At least in the case of the subdivisions of the uncia Maecianus is therefore talking about ‘symbolic’, accountant money, used in calculations, not about ‘real’ money.72 money, measure and the emperor There is a practical aspect to measured wealth: if one agrees on standard weights or lengths, or at least on exchange systems, transactions and translations are made possible. Metrology allows control, a certain degree of order 68 69

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Savio (2001) 160, 186. Mattingly (1928); Hobley (1998), esp. 12–14. For money units smaller than the as, see Crawford (1985) 60–5; Burnett (1987) 95–7. On the problems of calculating coinage output, see Howgego (1992); Duncan-Jones (1994) 95–247; Savio (2001) 50, 303–8. Also useful are Strack (1937); Sear (2000). West and Johnson (1967) 18–20. West and Johnson (1967) 17–18, 20–1. Rathbone (1991) 318–30 describes a system (Egypt, third century ce) which is basically monetised without necessarily using actual coins. Mrozek (2001) 9, 94–101 argues that the ‘abstractness’ of money was evident since at least late Republican times, because people invested and made debts, sometimes debts so huge that they could not possibly be paid back. A potentially infinite debt cannot correspond to actual, material, amounts of money. There was the idea, thanks to debit, interest and profit (faenus) that money, even when expressed in the language of money units, does not necessarily exist in the form of coins.

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and centralisation. On the other hand, the significance of measures lies in the fact that they are symbols. Because the relation between things and their representation is not immediate or univocal, any decision concerning that relation is invested with a special authority,73 which can be religious and/or political. For instance, in the Middle Ages in parts of Europe measures of grain were established by the king, supported by his God-given power, and they acquired a sacred character; breaking them was akin to sacrilege.74 Alternatively, decisions about measures can be based on science, and justified as reflecting nature itself: Hyginus, a probably first-century ce land-surveyor, argued that the kardo and decumanus, two perpendicular lines which were the main reference points when laying out a land-division grid, were grounded in nothing less than the heavens and the ratio of the universe.75 Or again, expediency or utility can be invoked in the choice of one metrological network over another: this seems to have partly motivated Frontinus’ decision to use the quinaria as standard over the many other possibilities, because it was the best known, and its subdivisions the most accurate.76 The difference between recourse to utility and recourse to science is that the former tends to acknowledge the man-made, artificial or conventional aspect of the decision, which is presented as preferable given the circumstances, hence somewhat arbitrary, rather than as the most true or rational thing to do. We can try to reconstruct what Maecianus may have thought on the issue. Perhaps his position was contained in the missing part of the treatise. In the extant text, he does not seem to take a stand on the question of whose authority is behind the money system he describes. He points out historical dimensions, the presence of economic interests, hints at local differences, but the fact that, for instance, the as is divided one way rather than another is not justified on the basis of nature or even of expediency: it is just given as a fact. Then again, Maecianus reveals the tentativeness of his arrangement at more than one point: the treatise is the result of his assessment or opinion (existimavi, 61.17), and his system is one of several possibilities. The particular order imposed on money may well be a convention, the result of a choice, a human decision. Analogous issues were being debated in the legal literature of the second century ce. The epistemic status of jurisprudence itself was questioned: was 73 74 75 76

See Kula (1986); Hocquet (1992); Porter (1995); Pedroni (1996); Grimaudo (1998); Ercolani Cocchi (2001). See Kula (1986). Hyginus 2, Constitutio limitum 134.5–6 (Campbell). This kind of position is very common in modern (post-1800) times: see, e.g., Mirowski (1992); Alder (1995); Schaffer (1995). Frontin. Aq. 1.26–37. See Alice K¨onig in this volume.

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it ars or scientia? Consequently, could it aim at certainty, or was it bound to approximation; were its practitioners technical experts or did they have to derive their authority from their political clout? Crucially, what did the law rest on?77 Various possibilities were mooted. Tradition was one ground for justification, and one that seems to have been quite powerful in various areas of Roman culture, although it was far from being unquestioned, especially in the period we are talking about. The notion of ‘use value’ (utilitas), often invoked in extant decisions, was far from self-explanatory: the common good was not pellucid, but had to be determined by someone with some sort of authority. The existence of a rationality internal to the law, ultimately congruent with human rationality, and reflecting, if imperfectly, the orderliness of the universe, was also a possibility. We have looked at Maecianus’ own mentions of ratio (reason, ‘rationale’). In fact, attempts to define a ratio for law (a ratio iuris), and to use it as an underlying, unifying principle have been traced in Roman jurists from at least Pomponius, a contemporary of Maecianus, to the third century ce. Especially in Gaius’ work, there is often a juxtaposition of two rationes, a natural one and a civic, political one, which ideally should work together.78 When that is not possible, it is suggested that nature should prevail.79 Celsus clearly states: ‘[Testaments] which are forbidden by nature are not endorsed by any law’.80 Underlying this distinction is the notion of a ‘law common to all peoples’ (ius gentium). Its identification with a sort of ‘natural law’ (ius naturale) is debatable, but, even if the ‘law common to all peoples’ is the product of convention, then it is a more natural and universal convention than that at the basis of the ‘civil law’ (ius civile), which only binds a specific community. A good example of the debate is the case of the entitlements of the head of the household (pater familias). Jurists of the second and third centuries ce were very aware that the power exerted by the father in a Roman household was a peculiarity of Roman law, i.e., part of their ‘civil law’, but it was not 77 78 79

80

Casavola (1980) 54–7; Bretone (1982) 42–3, 268–70; Scarano Ussani (1987) 21–5 and (1997) parts 1 and 3; Ducos (1994). As they do in Dig. 3.5.38, by Gaius (mid- to late second century ce). Cf. also Gai. Inst. 1.1; 1.89; 2.66; Dig. 8.2.8; 9.4; 13.6.18.2; 41.1.3; 41.1.7.7; 44.7.1.9 (all mentioning naturalis ratio, all by Gaius). See, e.g., Gai. Inst. 1.158, ratio civilis and civilia iura v. naturalia iura; Dig. 4.5.8, civilis ratio v. naturalia iura; Dig. 7.5.2, naturalis ratio v. the authority of the senate; Dig. 41.1.1, where the ius gentium, based on naturalis ratio, is declared older than the ius civile, ‘being the product of human nature itself ’. All the Dig. texts mentioned are by Gaius. Dig. 50.17.188.1. Celsus also lived in the second century ce. See also Nocera (1962); Levy (1963); Stein (1974); Archi (1981); Scarano Ussani (1979) 198–9, 200–5 and (1987) 17–20; Bretone (1982) 32–3 and (1989), esp. 323–51; Ducos (1994) 5160–6. For contemporary discussions on whether words are the product of nature or convention, see, e.g., Gell. NA 10.4.

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found among other peoples, i.e., not in the ‘law common to all peoples’, and thus arguably it was not based on nature. Its main strength was tradition, but in the course of the second century emperors like Hadrian seemed increasingly willing to put tradition on the side in the name of a different conception of what was legally the right thing to do. On the imperial scene, the sphere of application of any civil law to peoples other than the one that created it required some sort of justification: in metrological terms, in a situation where different units of measure exist, in order to establish a standard, appeal has to be made to something, be it practicality or the claim that the chosen standard is more rational or more natural than the others. In sum, I would argue that Maecianus’ approach to the subdivisions of money reflects contemporary legal debates. Jurists were concerned with the ambiguous nature of money; they, and Maecianus as one of them, reflect a situation where at least to some extent the link between thing and symbol has been problematised, weakened or even severed. Again, jurists were trying to put order in the law, and ground it firmly on a basis of nature, rationality or convention, creating standards, mapping out relations, cases and subcases; Maecianus was trying to do the same in the domain of money. In both cases, history and individual circumstances often got in the way; in both cases, the presence of a supreme authority loomed large in the background: the emperor. Where did the emperor stand in relation to the law: was he himself subject to it? The question had been discussed throughout the first century and seemed to be more or less settled in the second century ce, with the emperor emerging as the ultimate legal expert.81 Complications remained, however, as shown by a deliberation process about the inheritance rights of patrons towards freedmen reported by Ulpian and involving Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, Maecianus himself and other jurist friends: ‘We . . . followed this opinion (sententiam) when we dispatched a rescript in answer to the petition of Caesidia Longina; but likewise, our friend Volusius Maecianus, careful custodian of the civil law, apart from his long and well-grounded expertise in it, was induced by respect for our rescript to declare in our presence that he did not think he ought to say otherwise. But when we discussed the matter more fully with Maecianus himself and other legal experts also friends of ours, who had been summoned, it seemed rather that neither the words nor the meaning (sententia) of the law nor the praetor’s edict excluded the grandson from the property of his grandfather’s 81

Bretone (1989) 234–7.

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freedman; and that such was the view of several legal authorities too, but that it had also been the opinion (sententia) of our friend, the most honourable Salvius Julianus.’82 Several factors are in play here: legal expertise on the part of various individuals, all reassuringly denoted as ‘ours’ (noster or nostri); the literal and not strictly literal interpretation of the law; the edict of a praetor who would have been a member of the Senate and possibly the representative of a political authority other than that of the emperor; the emperors’ own opinion. There has been some debate about Maecianus’ demeanour in this case: for some, he was being too subservient to the decision of the emperors, for others, he was just being professional, the perfect lawyer-bureaucrat with no political identity, since the imperial will was in fact legally binding.83 In any case, it is clear that behind the amicable appearances, ever since Augustus the emperor was the gatekeeper on legal expertise: without his sanction, no expert had the authority to express binding legal opinions.84 In the passage above, the emperors mediate the various sources of authority. Their expertise consists in eventually choosing whose expertise ought to be applied to the case in hand. Rather than having the debate about the origin and justification of legal or metrological order, nature (physis) vs. culture (nomos), explicitly transferred onto himself, then, the emperor emerges as a figure who stands above others. Take the case of Maecianus’ fragment on the Rhodian law: because Antoninus Pius is the acknowledged master of the universe, he can sanction the application of a legal order, the law of the sea, other than the normal one. Again, some legislation introduced by Hadrian and Antoninus Pius seems to point in the direction of greater humanity towards women, children oppressed by paternal right (patria potestas) and slaves. This has been seen as a reflection of the greater attention they paid to non-Roman laws and customs, which in its turn would be the reflection of a lesser role for Rome as a city in the empire and a greater awareness of the multiculturalism of the empire. The flip side is, in advocating power of interpretation over the law common to all peoples (ius gentium) rather than just over civil law (ius civile), the emperor was reaffirming his power over the extended domain of the entire world.85 To put it in metrological terms, while acknowledging 82 83 84

85

Dig. 37.14.17. Cf. Bretone (1989) 219. Cf. Amarelli (1983) 88–9; Scarano Ussani, (1987) 75–6 and n. 86, with further references. Bretone (1989) 198, 200, 211–13. Bauman (1989) 236–7, 301–2 thinks that part of the story behind Hadrian’s emphasis on juridical administration, reform and greater role for the consilium principis is the fact that he wanted to weaken the role of the praetor, and through that indirectly of the senate and of the senatus consulta. Echoes of some of these issues in Dio Chrys. Or. 15.20 (mid- to late first century ce); Plut. De sera 550b (late first century to early second century ce); Aristid., Ad Romam 102–3 (155 ce). Casavola

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the existence and utility of other standards, the emperor posited himself as the supreme measure, to which the others were required to refer in case of conflict or when mediation was needed. The process itself by which the emperor became a super-standard can be seen as a kind of inscription device that began with Augustus himself. Even at the level of ritual – through his visage on coins, and the presence of his name and the events of his individual life within the official calendar – the emperor was originally officially a figurehead for the senate and the people of Rome. This link between imperial power and ‘real’ sources of authority was gradually erased, until the emperor could stand outside debates on rationality, nature or convention because he was not standing in for any further source of authority. From a sort of stand-in he became the ultimate reality of authority. From this perspective, the fact that the coinage for the Western part of the Empire was in this period and until 192 ce issued from a single centre, the mint of Rome, acquires some significance.86 Indeed, in mere economic terms Maecianus implies a situation (and this will become more and more the case in late antiquity) where the coin is valuable not so much because of its ‘real’ value (gold or silver or bronze), but because it is inscribed in a complex trust system, ultimately guaranteed by the state, i.e. the emperor.87 Or at least it should be. The grounding of order in economics as in law was ultimately contested, subject to recalcitrant moneylenders,88 the vicissitudes of history and the contingencies of geography. Conflicts ensued which had to be solved: in fact, in land-surveying as in law, most of the administration from the late first century ce seems to be negotiating disputes on the interpretation of previous land-divisions or previous legal decisions.89 It was in order to measure up to alternative sources of expertise or authority that Marcus Aurelius had to know about the law, and he had to know about money: so that he could afford, like Columella and like the architect described by Columella, not to be an expert, and thus supersede jurists and accountants (ratiocinatores) alike. conclusion Different peoples will have different measures: some Italic populations used a ten-unit based system for the as, which was abandoned by the Romans and

86 89

(1980) 215, 222, 226; Marotta (1988) 73–9; van der Waerdt (1994); Amarelli (1996); de Giovanni (1996); Scarano Ussani (1997). Scarano Ussani (1979) 134, 154–5, 200, describes ‘a critical attitude’ towards traditional Roman legal institutions on the part of members of the ruling class. 87 Cf. Savio (2001) 21. 88 POxy. 1411 (260 ce). Hobley (1998) 1. Cf. also Dio Cass. 52.30.9. Salvius Julianus manifests awareness of a conflict between some imperial decisions and the ratio iuris according to Scarano Ussani (1987) 150–2.

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is mentioned by Maecianus as a possible subdivision which is not in use.90 Analogously, land-surveyors report that different people will measure, count and divide up land differently.91 The Imperial administration through its officers had to come to terms with this diversity by finding either a unified system or a way of managing the diversity while partially retaining it. If Frontinus represents an empire where order in the form of measures and standards is being formulated, perhaps Maecianus speaks for a situation where one can, at best, acquire the knowledge to understand an order which is already in place, the result of an ultimately unresolved dialectic between systematising efforts, convention, regional variations, different sedimentations of history and the manifestation of disparate interest groups. The role of the reader of the Distributio (and the emperor is one of the intended readers)92 is not so much to express an order of one’s own, as to grasp and maintain – administer – what is already in place. It is an active role, reinforced by the imperatives and the ‘constructive’ verbs through which the subdivisions of money are in turn made, the names called out, the signs written down, the account given. Yet, it is not a creative role. The author is almost resigned to the fact that the world is in a certain way, that fringes of deregulation will always be present, that we have the stand-in; in fact, more than one system of stand-ins, but we cannot retrieve with certainty the ‘things’ behind them and with that, the real cause of the present order(s) of things. The Distributio, like many of the legal texts it seems germane to, does not aspire to retrieve the absolute foundations; it does not aim to go back to level zero, as it were, but to create a meta-level from which the others can be adjudicated and regulated. Sheep, if ever they were the ‘real’ pecunia, are not important any more: all that counts, and all that effectively exists, are stand-ins, pecunia numerata, and it is this reality that one must try to grasp. Marcus Aurelius may have craved the well-rounded speech that Greek paideia could provide, but Maecianus reminds him of the necessity to know what is appropriate for an emperor. The Roman children who learn to divide the as into a hundred parts in Horace’s vignette may indeed have been training for higher and more momentous imperial tasks. 90 91 92

See Pedroni (1996), esp. 25, 67–8. Hyginus 1, De condicionibus agrorum 80.9, 92.21–22; Hyginus 1, De generibus controversiarum 98.11– 12; Hyginus 2, Constitutio limitum 138.1–28 (Campbell). Addressing technical books to emperors is not uncommon (see, e.g., Vitruvius, Balbus, Pliny), but that to me does not exclude the possibility to take the dedication at face value as well, especially in cases, like Maecianus’, where the author was well acquainted with the dedicatee.

c h a p t e r 10

Probing the entrails of the universe: astrology as bodily knowledge in Manilius’ Astronomica Thomas Habinek

The upsurge of interest in astrology during the early principate is well attested. Emperors have their horoscopes published. Zodiacal signs take their place on a range of objects, from public monuments to legionary standards. Elite authors advertise their familiarity with astrological lore. Belief in stellar influence thus coincides with – and to a certain extent parallels – the triumph of rationalisation in the realms of law, history and governance. While we cannot rule out an indigenous interest in stellar influence, astrology at Rome is best understood as one more intellectual discipline transported from the Greek East and systematised and legitimised as part of Rome’s cultural revolution of the first centuries bce and ce.1 The paradox that a discipline as seemingly irrational as astrology flourishes amidst the rationalising enterprises of its time invites investigation, all the more so since astrology seems to have had a special appeal for the cosmopolitan elite.2 The traditional explanation for astrology’s ascent, which links it to the rise of dominant individuals, is vague and at best partial.3 Is it concern to identify potential victors in civil struggle that leads Romans to search the stars? If so, then we would expect widespread belief in stellar influence to precede interest in the horoscopes of a Sulla or Pompey – a proposition for which there is little evidence. Moreover, in its insistence on the predestined nature of human affairs, astrology is as likely to 1

2

3

For discussion of astrology’s popularity during the period see Bouch´e-Leclercq (1899) 546–70; Cramer (1954) 44–145; Stierlin (1986) 25–122; Barton (1994a) 27–70; (1994b) 40–60; Beard, North and Price (1998) 231–3. On rationalising disciplines during the late Republic and early principate see WallaceHadrill (1997); Moatti (1997). In addition to the self-advertisement of astrological knowledge by elite poets (e.g., Virg. G. 1.3–4; Hor. Carm. 2.13, 2.18; Luc. 1.45–59), we might note emperors’ interest in astrology (Cramer (1954) 81–231); the law’s protection of astrological research (Cramer (1954) 102; further discussion by Beard, North and Price (1998) 1.231–2); and its exemption of the well-connected Thrasyllus and his descendants from periodic expulsions of run-of-the mill astrologers and soothsayers (Cramer (1954): 92–5). In the words of Tacitus, astrologers constitute a class that ‘in our state will always be prohibited and always retained’ (Hist. 1.22) – a good indicator of their indispensability to elite dominance. E.g., Stierlin (1986) 15; Barton (1994b) 35.

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undermine elite claims to authority based on achievement as it is to encourage allegiance to one warlord or another;4 and its popularity persists unabated even after an imperial decree of 11 ce bans inquiry about individual fates.5 Is it then that disruption caused by great men and their client armies, or by the transition from republic to principate, prompts lesser mortals to seek consolation in contemplation of cosmic order? On this view, astrology would be a way of accommodating fast-paced change to a prior system of understanding the world. Such an explanation gains credence from surviving horoscopes, which are overwhelmingly retrospective in nature, telling the inquirer why person x turned out to live life y, rather than offering advice on a specific venture.6 But it, too, founders on chronology, since elite acceptance of astrology at Rome seems not to predate the problems it allegedly explains, nor does astrology diminish in influence as the turmoil of the late republic subsides. Barton’s admirable attempt to understand astrology as a Foucauldian discourse of power improves upon the ascription of astrology’s rise to an interest in the fates of great men, but still leaves us to wonder: why a discourse of this sort at this point in time?7 Investigation of astrology’s hold on the imagination of elite Romans in the early principate can benefit from closer examination of the ways in which it was presented to them. In particular, the five-book hexameter treatise of Manilius, written during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, explicitly seeks to justify the ways of heaven to men, who are represented as neither inclined nor disinclined to take them seriously.8 Comparison of the Astronomica (Astr.) with earlier works in the Latin didactic tradition brings to light issues and concerns that, at least in Manilius’ view, had not been addressed by even the most compelling thinkers and writers of preceding generations. And analysis of his poem in the context of other astrological treatises makes it possible to identify those aspects of astrology that Manilius expected would most engage his audience. Manilius’ 4

5 6

7 8

This is the inference of Cramer (1954) 60 concerning the revolt of Aristonicus of Pergamum in 133–30 bce The community of Heliopolis described by Diod. Sic. 2.57.3 combines universal freedom with commitment to astrology. Dio Cass. 56.25.5; Cramer (1954) 99; Barton (1994a) 54–5. For extant horoscopes see Neugebauer and van Hoesen (1959). Good examples of retroactive interpretations at 90–1 and 94. Astrology seems to follow the pattern of other ancient modes of explanation, such as medicine, which draw inferences from accumulation of past examples. Failure to make predictions is a key point in the critique of astrology by Favorinus of Arles at Gell. NA 14.1.24. Barton (1994b) 93 suggests that catarchic astrology, concerned with the likely outcome of new ventures, may have appealed more to non-elite clientele. Barton (1994b). Goold (ed.) (1977) xi–xv; Wilson (1985) 285. On Manilius’ participation in the elite tradition of didactic poetry, see Volk (2002), and running comments in Scarcia (ed.) (1996) and (2001).

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rhetorical relationship to his subject matter and his audience is itself a kind of testimony to the status of astrology in his day. Unlike Virgil, who in the Georgics assumes a shared understanding of the importance of agriculture, or Lucretius, who assumes resistance to the revolutionary nature of the Epicurean enterprise, Manilius claims to merit his readers’ attention chiefly on the basis of his virtuosity in presenting the esoteric subject matter of astrology in sophisticated and aesthetically pleasing Latin poetry. He doesn’t so much defend astrology as demonstrate its compatibility with his audience’s generic and ideological expectations. His emphasis on astrology as both an intellectual and a corporeal practice revitalises a traditional unity of knowledge threatened by the very processes of rationalisation that characterise his era. His poetry transforms astrology into an instrument of domination both in the banal sense of making the status quo seem inevitable and in the more challenging sense of making available to his elite audience ‘a strategy for living with the world’ that encompasses both mind and body.9 From the professional astrologers he acquires a defence of astrology as a rational mode of explanation; from the Roman poetic and religious tradition an understanding of the ways in which knowledge is carried by and through bodies. Various scholars have noted the complementarity between decline in importance of augury and haruspication, on the one hand, and rise in interest in astrology, on the other.10 Manilius helps us to understand not just what was gained by the transition to astrology, but also what was lost by the marginalisation of divination and therefore in need of recovery by some other means. Manilius’ interest in and particular take on the double nature of astrological knowledge is apparent already in his proem. Having just introduced his subject matter and thanked Caesar for the world peace that makes poetic endeavour possible, he proceeds to differentiate between two types of knowledge: Nor is it enough to know (novisse): there’s greater delight in understanding deeply the entrails of the great universe (scire . . . magni penitus praecordia mundi) (Astr. 1.16–17)

The verbs ‘know’ (novisse) and ‘understand’ (scire) may at first seem to describe modes of intellection. But the addition of the adverb ‘deeply’ (penitus) raises the possibility of a different kind of knowledge altogether, a bodily practice of handling and inspecting, the sort of activity carried out by priests who examine the entrails of sacrificial victims. This suggestion 9 10

Taussig (1993) 47 describing mimetic practices more generally. E.g. Potter (1994); Barton (1994b) 33–40; Beard, North and Price (1998) 230–2, 372–4.

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is only strengthened by succeeding verses, which speak of altars and fires and identify Manilius himself as a vates – a priest-prophet who, at least in Augustan literature, is also understood to have specialised knowledge of sacrificial victims and procedures.11 The word praecordia (translated here as ‘entrails’), describing the object of the second kind of knowing, itself does double duty in the passage, turning knowledge into a physical activity and assimilating the universe to the human body.12 As Pliny tells us, praecordia is the proper term for all of the exta, or ‘innards’, found in humans.13 While exta would be the more precise term in the context of animal sacrifice, praecordia is not impossible, and in the passage from the Astronomica serves to complicate the image of bodily exploration, transforming the universe into a human figure.14 The distinction between the types of knowledge represented by ‘know’ (nosco) and ‘understand’ (scio) recalls the standard ancient differentiation between astronomy, which entails knowledge of the movements of the stars, and astrology, which considers their effect on terrestrial life.15 Indeed, in an equally charged passage from book 4 of the Astronomica, Manilius invokes the same contrast, this time explicitly associating astrology with haruspication, that is the visual and tactile inspection of entrails. In a veritable ode to human ingenuity, Manilius proclaims that the god-like astrologer Does not remain content with the external appearance of the gods but searches within the bowels of heaven (caelum scrutatur in alvo), and pursuing (sequens) a body (corpus) kindred to his own he seeks himself (se quaerit) among the stars. I ask for confidence in this process as great as that assigned to birds and to organs (fibrae) quivering in the victim’s chest. (Astr. 4.908–12)

Again, the universe is both sacrificial victim and human analogue. And again the verbs describing the astrologer’s knowledge of it vacillate between the intellectual and the physical, with quaero (seek, search out) gravitating 11

12 14

15

On vates’ interest in entrails see Virg. G. 3.490–91, Aen. 4.60–66, Livy 2.42.10; on their knowledge of sacrificial procedure, Virg. Aen. 3.433–40, 6.149–53, Livy 1.45.6. On these and other passages, see Habinek (2005) 226–30, 255. On sacrificial imagery in the proem of Astronomica see also Schrijvers (1983); Wilson (1985) 293. 13 Plin. HN 30.42. Schwarz (1972). For the Latin vocabulary of sacrifice see Santini (1988). On the animation of the Manilian universe see also H¨ubner (1984). Several times elsewhere in imperial literature praecordia does double duty for human and animal innards: Apul. Met. 4.21.1, where a man disguised as a bear is stabbed in the gut; Apul. Met. 6.31.5, where a bandit proposes gutting Lucius, who has been transformed into an ass; and Tert. Apol. 30.6, where the Christian apologist asks why ‘the entrails of the victims rather than of the priests’ are to be examined. Wilson (1985) 288.

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toward the former, scrutari (rummage around in) toward the latter, and sequor (pursue, follow, trace) somewhere in between. Manilius’ assimilation of astrology to haruspication is a distinctive and motivated intervention in astrological lore. The most influential of Greek works on astrology, Ptolemy’s Four books (Tetrabiblos: second century ce), also commences with a contrast between astronomy and astrology built around two different verbs of knowing. To Ptolemy, astronomy entails grasping (katalambanomai) the movements of the heavens, while astrology relies upon observation (episkeptomai) of their influence on human life. The former process, because it pertains to the ethereal realm, yields sureness (bebaito¯es) of conclusions, while the latter, concerned as it is with materiality (hyl¯e ), is less reliable. Ptolemy raises the issue of bodiliness, but only by way of apology: astrology, he concedes, cannot be as dependable a science as astronomy.16 Knowledge of it will always be at a distance, removed and visual in nature (episkeptomai derives from the root skept-, implying seeing). Manilius has no such qualms: the bodiliness of astrology and of its objects (the innards of the sky, the lives of human beings) arouses his passion and elevates his subject. Even when he changes metaphors from inspecting entrails to riding a chariot through the skies, he can’t escape bodies – his own, or those of the stars and planets that impinge upon him during his travels.17 Other passages of Manilius that correspond closely to Greek astrological writings also emphasise knowledge acquired of and through bodies. For example, while Manilius’ account of human progress runs parallel to one found in the late-antique body of mystical writings now known as the Corpus Hermeticum, especially in its inclusion of religious rites among the civilising practices of early human beings, Manilius expressly identifies haruspication, augury and magic as instances of such rites at the point where the Greek treatise mentions only the swathing of corpses.18 Manilius’ interest in decans-theory (whereby the zodiacal disc is divided into ten-degree sections) differentiates him from Ptolemy and other more philosophical astrologers, but it closely parallels a hermetic treatise that associates each sign of the zodiac (and subsequently each subdivision, or decans, thereof ), with a part of the human body.19 According to both Manilius and the 16 17 18

19

For analysis of Ptolemy’s argument and its relationship to Aristotle, see Long (1982). On the physicality of Manilius’ journey to the skies see Wilson (1985), Landolfi (2003) 23–8. Stob. Ecl. 23.64–8, in reference to the rites taught by Isis and Osiris as part of their civilising endeavours. Cf. the important discussion of Manilius’ relationship to the Corpus Hermeticum in Vallauri (1954). Ruelle (1908).

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anonymous hermetic treatise, Aries is assigned the head, Taurus the neck, Gemini the shoulders, and so on. By associating limbs of the human body with signs of the zodiac, as opposed to an alternate system in which planets govern body parts, Manilius can maintain the analogy between the totality of the heavens, i.e. the complete circle of the zodiac, and the human body. As he puts it, Consider the parts of the human frame distributed among the constellations (hominis . . . partes) . . . and the individual limbs obedient to particular authorities (singulaque imperiis propriis parentia membra) . . . that exercise control over them out of all the body (toto de corpore). (Astr. 2.453–56)

It would be easy, if misleading, to ascribe Manilius’ assimilation of the universe to a human body, and vice versa, to his Stoicising tendencies. As Anthony Long writes, ‘the modern consensus on unqualified Stoic support for astrology has alarmingly frail foundations’.20 Indeed, there was a strain of Stoicism, presumably familiar to Manilius, that overtly rejected astrology. Stoic ‘sympathy’ (sympatheia) implies a correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm that grounds an ethics ‘in accordance with nature’. Manilian astrology, in contrast, assumes a mutual mimesis between heaven and earth: human reason imposes terrestrial shapes on the heavens (i.e. the heavens imitate the earth), and human bodies and destinies follow the course set for them by the stars. If there is an ancient philosophical school to which Manilius must be assigned, Pythagoreanism (which also lies behind the Corpus Hermeticum)21 is as strong a candidate as Stoicism. From the very outset of his poem, Manilius as much as states that it is impossible to transmit astrological lore without the musicality implicit in the term carmen (‘song’) – an idea made explicit in Pythagorean teachings on the foundational power of music.22 In the words of Walter Burkert, ‘the wondrous potency of music, which moves the world and compels the spirit, captured in the net of number – this was a cardinal element of the secret of the universe revealed to the wise Pythagoras’.23 And so it is to Manilius as well, who proposes to draw the stars down from the heavens and lay bare the ethereal census ‘through song’ (per carmina, 1.12), to register as a singer (canentem, 1.22) the ‘surrounding clamour’ (circumstrepit, 1.23) of the universe. For Manilius, the poet’s 20 21

Long (1982) 172. Does Manilius adopt Stoic terminology in order to legitimise an otherwise suspect discipline? Cf. Baldini Moscadi (1979) on Stoicism, magic and astrology. 22 Habinek (2005) 86–94. 23 Burkert (1972) 378. Kingsley (1995).

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modulation of words to metre is an important manifestation of the ‘fixed law’ (certa cum lege, 1.22) by which the universe operates. Manilius’ claim to poetic authority, in the proem and related passages, is bolder than that of any of his Roman predecessors – so much so that it has led one commentator to describe it (wrongly) as self-contradictory, even impious.24 Manilius draws upon prior images of vatic power and magical incantation but asks us to take them literally.25 As he puts it in the opening verses of his poem: Through song (carmine) I aim to draw down (deducere) from the sphere of the heavens divine skills and fate-aware constellations that influence the diverse fates of men – all the work of heavenly reason. I will be first (primus) to set Helicon in motion to new tunes and the woods on its summit nodding from their green treetops. I bring alien rites unrecounted by any before me. (Astr. 1.1–6)

Manilius combines the didactic tradition’s interest in knowledge of the cosmos with Roman Alexandrians’ pride in adapting alien poetic forms to new contexts. He is both the lucky man of Virgil’s Georgics (1.490–2), who abandons less worthy concerns for scientific inquiry, and the alter ego of Propertius, who uses metaphors of initiation to convey the intensity of his commitment to a new poetic art (e.g., ‘I am the first to enter’, primus ingredior, Prop. 3.1.3). In combining these two aspects of Augustan poetry Manilius revives and reanimates the metaphor of poet as vates (a title he claims for himself at Astr. 1.23, as noted earlier). For the Augustan era, vates is not only a priest-prophet and a singer and a handler of entrails: he (or she) is also an importer of religious rites from afar.26 In Augustan poetry appeal to the figure of the vates comes close to claiming ritual authority for the poetsinger as means of access to the world beyond the here and now. But the fragmentation of the figure of the vates into its various components betrays a secular and rationalising discomfort with any such unified vision of the power of song. Manilius has no such reservations: he really can ‘draw down’ the universe (like the Thessalian witches who are differentiated from poets by Propertius, Virgil and other predecessors),27 because the universe is a willing participant in the process. As he puts it elsewhere 24 25 26 27

Volk (2001). Cf. Wilson (1985) 290: ‘Manilius therefore is claiming literally to set the mountains and the woods in motion and so to rank as an Orpheus or Arion’. For the vates as importer of new rites see Livy 4.30.9, 39.8.4, 39.16.8. E.g., Prop. 1.1.19, Virg. Ecl. 8.69.

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thomas habinek Who could know (nosse) heaven if not through the gift of heaven? And find god, unless he were himself a part of the gods? ... Who could deny the sacrilege in laying hold of the universe – if it were unwilling – and drawing (deducere) it down to earth, captive, as to oneself [or itself]? (Astr. 2.115–16, 2.128–9)

Manilius acknowledges the boldness of his earlier appropriation of the Thessalian trick implicit in deducere (‘draw down’) even as he justifies it. He treats the universe as a body to be manipulated through magic or taken by force, but only because the universe wills this treatment. The ambiguity of the phrase in semet in the final line quoted above (does it mean ‘drag the universe onto itself’ or ‘drag the universe onto the person of the dragger’?) precisely articulates the commensurability of the universal body and the human subject.28 By drawing the universe to himself, the poet would also be drawing it in on itself, since the term mundus (translated here as universe) can refer both to the totality of creation and to the heavens as a specific portion of creation. In any event, what matters is that Manilius’ ‘deduction’ of the universe falls short of sacrilege because of the universe’s willing participation in the process, a point made clear by the emphatic (and in my reading, contrastive) position of the adjective ‘unwilling’ (invitum, Astr. 2.127) immediately after the main caesura in its line. Indeed, this entire section of book 2 celebrates the conjunction of man and sky (hominem coniungere caelo, Astr. 2.105) and their mutual interpenetration by a single spirit (spiritus unus, Astr. 2.64). Manilius’ adaptation of the earlier poetic tradition raises issues of embodiment both implicitly, in his claim to possess the full range of magical, religious and musical powers of the vates, and explicitly, in his revision of earlier accounts of human beings’ relationship to the material universe. If Manilius’ description of human progress in Astronomica 1 draws upon but revises a comparable narrative preserved in the Corpus Hermeticum, it bears a similiar relationship to a long-established literary topos concerning the civilising effect of human intellectual endeavours.29 Like Cicero, Lucretius and Virgil, who provide overlapping lists of human achievements,30 Manilius too celebrates the power of skill (sollertia), utility (usus), effort (labor), 28 29 30

Volk (2001) clarifies the possible meanings of the phrase in semet, but underestimates the logical and rhetorical importance of invitum. For fuller discussion see Romano (1979). Cic. Tusc. 1.62; Rep. 3.3; Lucr. 1.62–79, 5.1364–1456; Virg. G. 1.121–46.

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and prior experience (experientia). His evocation of culture-heroes, both divine (Mercury) and human (unnamed kings), plays off Lucretius’ praise of Epicurus31 as well as Virgil’s recognition of Jupiter’s role in human development. The Virgilian intertext is particularly noteworthy, since both Virgil and Manilius describe a marked before and after in human development (‘before Jupiter’ (ante Iovem), G. 1.125 ∼ ‘before them’ (ante illos), Astr. 1.66), celebrate the importance of labor (G. 1.145, Astr. 1.80, and 1.114), and refer to the sharpening of mortal wits. Manilius’ expression: But when long time sharpened mortal hearts (sed cum longa dies acuit mortalia corda (Astr. 1.79) clearly echoes Virgil’s description, at the outset of his account of cultural progress, of Jupiter as ‘sharpening the minds of mortals with cares’ (curis acuens mortalia corda, G. 1.123). Manilius’ references to his literary predecessors serve to highlight his variation on their themes. Whereas Cicero, Lucretius and Virgil collectively refer to the invention of sailing, agriculture, music and astronomy, only Manilius inserts divination and magic among the civilising developments of human history: Lest I sing the commonplace (vulgata), they began to understand the language of birds to consult entrails and rupture snakes with incantation to summon shades and set deepest Acheron in motion to turn day into night and night into dawn. Teachable skill by effort conquered everything (omnia conando docilis sollertia vicit). (Astr. 1.91–95).

The passage is replete with allusions to a wide range of earlier literature. Particularly striking is the way Manlius brackets his introduction of the bodily knowledge of haruspicators and magicians. He opens with a paradoxical reference to Virgil’s lament over themes that are commonplace, or vulgata (G. 3.3), only to introduce one that is not. And he concludes by fashioning a new aphorism (‘teachable skill by effort conquered everything’) out of Virgilian sententia (‘effort conquered everything’: labor omnia vicit, G. 1.145) and syntax (the gerund as ablative of means), and pointedly Ciceronian diction (sollertia, ‘skill’, as the human faculty that drives progress through the ages).32 From the perspective of the literary tradition, perhaps the most revealing aspect of Manilius’ poetics of corporeality is to be found in his literalisation of Lucretius’ metaphor of the universe as a body. As we might expect, 31

Compare Lucr. 5.1–5 and Man. 1.25–33.

32

Baldini Moscadi (1979).

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Manilius disavows the randomness of the universe as imagined by Lucretius and his philosophical hero Epicurus. But this rejection of Lucretian atomism includes a reworking of the earlier poet’s own imagistic likening of the universe to a body. As Duncan Kennedy notes, Lucretius’ description of atoms assimilates them to human body parts and processes of procreation. By giving atoms names such as ‘birth-giving bodies’ (genitalia corpora), ‘the seeds of things’ (semina rerum), and ‘the first bodies’ (corpora prima), and by describing them as acting ‘of their own accord’ (sponte sua), Lucretius seeks to ‘reduce the alienating effect of his system. . . The poem [De Rerum Natura] thus offers a reconfiguration of nature, granting to nature, in Lucretius’ term, a fresh, and, as he believes, definitive figura, “form”, “outline”, “shape”.’33 Manilius, in turn, in his own most explicit declaration of doctrinal allegiance, reworks Lucretius’ imagery to suggest that whatever configuration is going on, it results in the animation of the universe. ‘A single spirit’, he writes, inhabits every sector of the universe, permeates it, and rushing throughout, configures it as an animate body’ (corpusque animale figuret, 2.65). As the passage proceeds, Manilius continues to deploy Lucretian images and arguments to his own ends, explaining the cycles of nature as the outcome of the universe’s orderly rationality, a rationality that rules human affairs as well: Therefore this god and reason (ratio), which governs everything, leads from heavenly constellations the animate beings of the earth (terrena animalia). Although the stars are removed at a great distance, reason nonetheless compels recognition of how they distribute lives and fates among the nations and assign distinctive characters to individual bodies (singula corpora). (Astr. 2.82–86).

Reason is no longer a tool for analysing the universe but a power that informs it. And the universe, far from being merely figured as a body, consists of multiple bodies, aethereal and terrestrial, that interact meaningfully with one another. Manilius articulates the astrological principle of stellar influence in language that builds upon and transforms the Lucretian image of the universe as a body. Corporeality is not reason’s figuration of the universe, but the very feature of reality that reason is called upon to probe and comprehend. 33

Kennedy (2002) 92.

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At a superficial level it is easy to see how Manilius’ poem and its subject matter participate in the self-legitimising ideology of Rome’s imperial elite. Manilius deftly celebrates the horoscopes of two successive emperors, giving high praise first to Capricorn, which admires itself due to its association with Augustus (Astr. 2.507–9), while Libra, the birth sign of Tiberius, governs Italy, and especially Rome, ‘which raises and lowers the nations placed in the scales’ (lancibus et positas gentes tollitque premitque, 5.775). His ‘astrology of nations’ – a device that in Ptolemy’s parallel account defensively explains how individuals born at the same time can have different destinies – instead becomes the basis of a world tour of Roman dominions and explanation for historical enmities between peoples. Indeed, while Ptolemy expressly advises consideration of the general problem of nations and cities prior to investigation of individual destinies (Tetr. 2.2), Manilius postpones the astrology of nations until relatively late in the poem, even then treating it only cursorily (Astr. 4.711–806). Unlike the Corpus Hermeticum, with its ‘total absence of references to contingent reality’,34 or the astrological poem of Dorotheus of Sidon (late first or early second century, ce), which focuses on the anonymous lower ranks of society (e.g., ‘How many will own the native if he is a slave?’, 1.11),35 Manilius’ Astronomica celebrates emperors, incorporates astrological exempla from Roman history and identifies the hierarchy of the universe with the orderly ranking of the Roman commonwealth (Astr. 5.734–42). The entire poem concludes with an expression of relief that the masses of the stars in heaven are as powerless as the ‘populace’ (populus) is on earth – to which had nature given strength to match their number the empyrean itself would be unable to endure their flames and the universe would blaze atop the Olympian pyre. (Astr. 5.743–5)

In relating the universe to contemporary social arrangements, Manilius extends a line of thought familiar from earlier Roman epic, such as Ennius’ Annales and Virgil’s Aeneid, and characteristic of the domesticated Stoicism that constitutes the dominant ideology of the imperial elites.36 But – to adopt his own metaphor – he also probes more deeply into the nature of power and knowledge and in so doing points the way to a new understanding of astrology’s hold on elite Romans during the early principate. 34 36

35 Quoted from translation of David Pingree (1976). Vallauri (1954) 167. On the relationship between cosmology and imperialism in Roman epic see Hardie (1986); on Stoicism as elite ideology, Shaw (1985).

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Manilius’s emphasis on the corporeality of the universe and of the astrological subject’s encounter with it restores the unity of body and mind threatened by the processes of rationalisation in which astrology otherwise participates. The dissemination of new disciplines in the late republic and early principate strengthened the hold of what Paul Connerton calls ‘inscribing practices’, patterns of thinking and knowing based on or analogous to writing, and therefore consistently open to critique.37 Astrology respects the claims of such practices, even seeking to become one itself, while also producing a kind of knowledge carried by bodies, and thus less susceptible to analysis, resistance and change. As Connerton puts it, summarising Oakeshott, ideologies can only be ‘abbreviations of some manner of concrete behaviour . . . [W]hat has to be learned is not an abstract idea, or a set of tricks, nor even a ritual, but a concrete, coherent manner of living in all its intricateness’.38 As presented by Manilius, this is what astrology provides the urban elites of the early Roman empire: a manner of living in all its intricateness. Astrology is systematic and abstruse enough to be distinctively their possession. But it is sufficiently bodily in orientation, in its teachings concerning the ‘exercise’ of heavenly forces on the human subject, in its performance (as Manilian song or as professional consultation), and in its intended impact on the everyday experience of its devotee to absorb the functions of divination, magic and other modes of accommodating contingent human experience to the natural world. Precisely in its focus on the responsiveness of the human subject from birth, it serves to ease the transition from one generation, one emperor, one set of social circumstances to the next. It tells its followers that they, and all they control, are ‘perfectly adapted to the form of cosmic being’39 in every dimension of experience, and thereby renders their position impervious to critique. Organising knowledge in texts and through bodies, astrology is well-positioned to assume a critical role in the reproduction of social order over time.40 37 40

38 Connerton (1989) 10. 39 Benjamin (1999) 721. Connerton (1989), esp. 102–3. Critical, but perhaps not unique. In time, the spread of sophistic rhetoric, with its own powerful pairing of inscribing and incorporating practices, will pose a significant challenge to the ascendancy of astrology. See Gellius’ suggestion that Favorinus’ denunciation of astrology may itself be a rhetorical showpiece (NA 14.1.2) and Firmicus Maternus’ overt hostility to the rhetoricians (Mathesis 1.1).

c h a p t e r 11

Galen’s imperial order of knowledge Rebecca Flemming

Order (taxis) is a vital matter for the great imperial physician Galen of Pergamum. Sound method (in all things) depends on it: on beginning at the beginning and proceeding systematically through all the requisite stages until the goal is attained. It is, moreover, a test that most in the medical field fail. Galen’s total commitment to good order provides him with a measure against which his rivals (past and present) can be measured and found wanting: it creates an important space within which his superiority can be asserted once again. Thus, for example, he makes order a key dividing line between Rationalists and Empiricists in On the therapeutic method, suggesting that it underlies the epistemological gap between these two medical groupings.1 The latter, he avers, solve problems and make discoveries in a disorderly fashion – through what they happen to observe, through chance experience – while the former lay claim to an orderly and logical approach to the acquisition and consolidation of knowledge. Their delivery is poor, however, and most Rationalists fail to start at the beginning; they also recapitulate received wisdom rather than actually working through a line of reasoning or argument. Two types of taxic failure are thus demonstrated, and duly criticised, allowing the virtues of the Galenic model to shine through all the more clearly. It is stated more positively, and practised, in many of his tracts and treatises: proper order is always asserted, and essayed, in his various enquiries and disquisitions. Still, as Galen became increasingly aware over the course of his long and illustrious career, especially as his monumental oeuvre began to take on something approaching its final shape, that shape lacked the kind of order he so repeatedly avowed in his individual projects. The sum of well-ordered parts is not necessarily a similarly structured whole; an accusation that could be levelled not just at the sum of his writings, but also at the totality of the 1

Gal. MM 1.4 (x 30–35 K); and on medical sects and Galen’s relation to them more generally see, e.g., Frede (1985). A key to abbreviations for Galen’s titles can be found at the beginning of this volume.

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medical art (iatrik¯e techn¯e ) they claimed to encompass, since the two were so closely connected. The former displayed the latter, variously demonstrated Galen’s mastery of all the knowledge, methods and skills requisite to medicine; any problems of order could not, therefore, be confined to the literary realm, but might also call into question the authority of his version of the techn¯e in a more global sense. This gap, therefore, had to be closed: overall order had to be imposed, and there are recurrent efforts amongst his later works to do just that. The first attempt was made with the short treatise On the order of my own books, addressed to one Eugenianus and probably written around the time of Septimius Severus’ accession to the imperial throne in 193 ce.2 Here Galen proposed programmes of reading, structured paths through his oeuvre. Next, the compact compendium on the Medical art made a rough stab at a more general ordering of medical knowledge, and supported its summary outline with a bibliographic endpiece that provided a guide to the works that fill in the detail on each topic covered. An exhaustive listing of his entire literary output was, however, deferred to a later occasion, a promise fulfilled by the arrival of On my own books, a text that not only lists but classifies, first biographically and then by subject matter. Lastly, On my own opinions, is a summation of key Galenic tenets, completed perhaps at the very end of his long life, in the early third century ce.3 These last two texts present themselves primarily as guardians of authenticity, as defences against literary fraud or mutilation, and doctrinal error or distortion, respectively. Nor is this a pre-emptive strike. Galen claims that works falsely attributed to him are already on sale in the Sandalarium at Rome, and that his writings, despite their clarity, are currently being traduced by modern readers, ignorant of grammar and the basic tools of understanding as they are.4 Of course, he also has his eyes fixed firmly on posterity, on the time when he will be unable to come to the aid of his oeuvre in person, and must rely on these textual boundary markers and signposts to police and direct subsequent interpretations. Issues of order 2

3

4

This work is usually located in the period between the death of Marcus Aurelius and the accession of Septimius Severus but has clear connections with works usually placed in Severus’ reign, not least the fact that it shares its addressee with the last eight books of On the therapeutic method (see x 456 K). On the standard periodisation/chronology of Galen’s oeuvre see Ilberg (1889), (1892), (1896), (1897); and Bardong (1942); though various subsequent textual discoveries, and the lengthening of Galen’s life (see Nutton (1995b)), have amended the schedule to some extent. So, at least, the Arabic tradition would have it. Rhazes states, for example, that this was Galen’s last work (Muhaqqiq (ed.) (1993) 4.2–4). See the recent edition by V. Nutton (CMG v 3.2; 1999) for more detailed discussion of this text. Gal. Lib. prop. pr. (SM ii 91.1–13), Prop. plac. 1 (CMG v 3.2 54.19–56.11).

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are, therefore, implicit in these productions, submerged under other ostensible objectives; though the threat of disorder is perhaps more palpable than any order Galen imposes. The threat that the border between the genuine and the fake would dissolve, that the fundamental principles to which Galen had been consistently committed throughout his career and had brought to bear on all his literary compositions, might be betrayed, altered beyond recognition, by future generations, is all too real. Ordering is more openly pursued in the other pair of texts, in response to a different (though interrelated) set of challenges. Thus, On the order of my own books opens with Galen’s assent to Eugenianus’ suggestion that some explanation of the order of his writings would be helpful: For they do not all have the same aim, function and subject matter. As you know, some were written at the request of friends, aimed specifically at their situation (hexis), others were dictated for youthful beginners.5

Nor are these the only causes of heterogeneity and confusion. Further works had to be composed in response to criticism received, founded (of course) on error and misunderstanding; while various notes made for Galen’s own personal use found their way into the public domain, contrary to his wishes. Indeed, a whole range of Galenic texts passed, unsupervised, from their intended recipients to much wider and less suitable audiences.6 The diversity inevitably produced by targeted composition thus threatened to degenerate into promiscuous chaos. The inclusion of ‘subject matter’ among the problematic variables also signals back to the inherent complexity and multiplicity of medicine itself, a further force for literary proliferation and diversification, which is what the summary Medical art essentially strives to counter and control. So too, in its own way, the treatise On the parts of the art of medicine, which attempts to rein in, or at least impose some kind of order and reason on, the divisional profligacy within the art. This over-abundance is demonstrated in terms of both the wider range of different methods of partition applied and the myriad branches of medical knowledge and practice that have variously been brought into existence. While the methodical divergences are the product of wider disputes in the learned medical tradition – such as between the Empiricists and Rationalists – the profusion of subdivisions and specialisms, or at least the actual materialisation of so many of the almost endless theoretical possibilities thus created, is more socially and economically determined: 5 6

Gal. Ord. lib. prop. 1 (SM ii 80.3–7); cf. Lib. prop. 2 (SM ii 102.10–19). Gal. Lib. prop. pr. and 2 (SM ii 92.4–93.16 and 97.6–98.11).

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You [i.e. Justus, the treatise’s addressee] should not be surprised if the scope of the art of medicine causes it to be divided in a great city into this large number of sections.7

It is only in a huge metropolis such as Rome (and Alexandria) that a career as a dedicated tooth-, ear-, or eye-doctor, or as a cutter of hernias, or as a specialist on the stone, or whatever, is viable.8 Galen’s Rome was particularly awash with such people, who presented, in various ways, a threat to the integrity of the iatrik¯e techn¯e. Firstly, their logical proliferation threatened to burst the boundaries of the art, to render it incoherent through overpopulation and excessive differentiation. For, if being a tooth-doctor and a hernia-cutter are both legitimate professional identities then it follows that a different physician will be required to deal not only with each part of the body, but also for each ailment of each part. Secondly (and interconnectedly), there is the question of the relationship each sub-set of skills has with the art as a whole: where does this leave the unity of medicine? For this is a crucial, foundational, concept for Galen, and indeed other medical writers in a culture that, more broadly, ranked the generalist above the specialist. Parts of medicine must, therefore, be validly and properly derived from the totality; must make clear reference back to their unitary origins. That is, again, to assert the need for order amidst a confusion that might degenerate further; though it must be admitted that the actual ordering Galen proposes and performs in On the parts of the art of medicine is not as decisive or successful as the situation would seem to demand. The failures of orderly correspondence between parts and whole in both art and oeuvre are, therefore, derived mainly from a series of circumstances external to Galen himself. The character of medicine itself has a role to play in the story, as does Galen’s natural affinity with it, the sense in which he has had valuable things to say on the subject, things people want (or need) to hear, right from the outset of his career, which in turn leads his own output to be heterogeneous, as explained above for On the order of my own books.9 The more serious problems arise, however, from the ways in which medicine’s inherent complexity has been exacerbated, allowed to run riot, in the contemporary world: a world of material growth, of increased content, 7

8 9

Gal. Part. art. med. 2.3, translation from the Arabic by M. Lyons (CMG Supp. Or. ii 28.9–10 and 29.13–14; for the Latin version see 120.29–31). On this text, and further discussion of these points, see von Staden (2002). Gal. Part. art. med. 2.3 and 2.2 (CMG Supp. Or. ii 28.9–18 and 26.21–3; 120.31–121.3 and 120.17–22). See, e.g., Ord. lib. prop. 4 (SM ii 88.6–89.4) for some of Galen’s claims about his innate suitability for medicine, combined, of course, with good education and total commitment; and Lib. prop. 2 (SM ii 97.6–98.11) for his literary precocity.

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but falling intellectual and moral standards, a place of much ignorance and error, from which control and sound judgement are too often missing. All of which puts considerable pressure on a man of Galen’s educational and ethical formation. The organic development of his own output, driven by his desire for a totalising understanding of all matters relevant to the medical art, and shaped by his own commitment to good order, has thus been multiply disrupted, by his friends and companions, with their requests for clarification and edification, as much as by his enemies and rivals, with their attacks and glaring mistakes: all require (he feels) a response. Nor do the forces that produce this heterogeneity in his work show much sign of letting up thereafter, indeed, various extra entropic tendencies come into operation following production, threatening to dissolve the coherence of Galen’s project further. So he is compelled to attempt to redress the situation, to assert his ownership over his own body of writing, and over the iatrik¯e techn¯e itself. Several themes emerge in this recuperative discourse of order. Some points are very self-referential, and self-serving (though that does not make them entirely untrue). Galen’s figuration of this field enables him to complain, and complain vigorously, about his very success; a tactic that he is very partial to. It is his superiority, his abilities, his authority and reputation, which are at the root of many of his problems. The fact that his is a voice people want, indeed need, to hear on such a wide range of topics and issues, that he is so much in demand, is crucial to the loss of control over his oeuvre. However, Galen has also situated himself in the highly competitive and contentious world of classical medicine more broadly, and demonstrated his participation in its complex networks of power and prestige. He has, furthermore, drawn particular attention to certain key aspects of his wider social and cultural environment in this respect, aspects of its imperial formation. Indeed, he has actively involved himself in that formation. In particular, Galen’s struggle for order is a struggle for control over abundance, as also is the ongoing Roman imperial project: indeed, the tension and interplay between the two might be said to characterise processes of conquest and colonial rule more broadly. Empire is a cornucopia, but that richness, that fecundity, must be properly structured and directed, properly arranged and managed. Otherwise it may slip into luxury and excess, be misappropriated and abused, and thus disrupt established patterns of morality and power. It may even come to undermine the mastery of the rulers itself, both practically and conceptually. The alignment between Galen’s empire of knowledge and Rome’s political dominion in this respect is not just implicit, abstract or figurative, it is positively articulated and concretely grounded in various ways. The world of plenty, productive and

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problematic as it is, is clearly centred on Rome, as imperial capital, and that is where Galen situates himself as he strives to organise that plenty as it relates to medicine. This is specifically indicated in On the parts of the art of medicine and On my own books, but there is a general sense of this placement purveyed in the other works mentioned so far too. Galen is, wants and needs to be at the centre of things, at the centre of power: power over a vast empire. Nowhere but Rome could support his ambition, could foster his totalising vision. There is nowhere else he could stand and have both the reach and leverage to bring order to it all, to bring a much better order to so much more than anyone else. The problems of that location have also been brought out; accusations that abundance is being mismanaged, has become entropic excess, have been made in these same taxic texts. That, however, is very much part of the imperial package, and drawing attention to metropolitan vices, to failures of mastery and control, threats of disorder and devaluation, is an integral part of much writing of the early empire, in Latin as well as Greek. The question has been raised, however, whether Galen’s criticisms do not possess a rather different quality to those of, say, Pliny the Elder, or Seneca the Younger, with which they certainly share much content, in that they are lodged in an essentially, avowedly, Hellenic cultural identity, while Pliny’s, for example, are ostensibly grounded in old-fashioned Roman values and traditions, and Seneca’s are more hybrid products. Simon Swain particularly stresses this point, reading Galen’s Greek allegiances as providing ‘insulation’ from the Roman world, an insulation not bridged by any real interest in the ‘Roman idea’, or involvement in the imperial government, in contrast to a number of roughly contemporary Greek writers, from Lucian and Pausanias to Aelius Aristides and Arrian.10 Galen’s disapproval of contemporary Rome, his attacks on her anti-intellectualism and poor educational standards as well as her more materialistic failures, has, for Swain, a greater coherence and cogency than his more positive engagements with the city, its inhabitants and endeavours.11 These are sporadic and superficial, a matter of expediency, about advancing his career, while Galen’s true loyalties lie entirely elsewhere. Swain thus concludes that, ‘In a very real sense, in what mattered to him, Galen . . . was not in the Roman Empire’.12 This whole volume, however, is about how much harder it is to escape from the Roman Empire than that statement would suggest; a point that has 10 11 12

Swain (1996) 377. Swain does discuss these positive moments (1996) 363–72; and for differently emphasised coverage of some of the same passages see Nutton (1978) and (1991). Swain (1996) 378–9.

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been repeatedly made in much recent scholarship relating to other empires too.13 Indeed, Swain’s suggestion that the intensely Greek identity asserted by men such as Galen in the ‘Second Sophistic’ was a reaction to Roman control would also seem to undermine the idea of Galen as an author who stands apart from the Roman Empire.14 Can Galen really be such a clear product of Rome’s empire and not participate in it? As already indicated, the argument in this chapter is a different one, in respect to both Galen and the empire in which he operates. Galen may come from Pergamum and remain committed to his essentially Greek cultural and ethical formation, even use it as a basis for his criticisms of the contemporary Roman world, but none of that prevents him from utilising Rome’s empire also, from drawing on its material and ideative resources, its scope and structure, in creating, organising and selling his own medical system. There is, moreover, no contradiction here, though there may be tensions and slippages. These kinds of interactions are, rather, constitutive of the Roman imperial project itself; in all their complexity, their multiplicity of perspective and emphasis.15 These, then, are the themes that will be explored further in this essay, explored in particular as they emerge around and through questions of order, both in Galen’s individual works and in his oeuvre as a whole. For, to find the Roman Empire in the contents of the Pergamene’s writings, in the peoples and territories, medical materials and foodstuffs, diseases and cures, referred to and described therein, is too easy and obvious. The claim is rather that specific patterns of empire, the signs of an imperial order that goes beyond simple geography, can be found in, and across, his works. Those patterns do also possess a particular cultural inflection, for Galen’s Greek identity and attitudes are not irrelevant here; it is just that they do not allow him to stay detached from the Roman Empire; rather they provide a particular trajectory of involvement, which needs to be examined as part of the overall package. the ord er i n the boo k s The methods of organisation and structure adopted in particular texts and treatises, and the reflections on arrangement they contain, will now 13

14 15

As emphasised in the introduction (esp. pp. 3–6); and see also for more thoroughgoing ‘imperial’ approaches to the Greek literature of the first few centuries ce, Schmitz (1997) and Whitmarsh (2001). Swain (1996) 411. As Pliny also demonstrates, for example, with his reliance on, and his manipulation of, Greek knowledge: see, e.g., Beagon (1992); and also Murphy (2004).

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be analysed in detail, before returning to the ordering of the cumulative whole at the end. The focus here will be on the major tracts, those covering expansive and complex topics, and comprising multiple books; thus posing rather more acute organisational and presentational challenges than a single, narrowly focused book or booklet. While most of the works in Galen’s vast output come in at three books or under, there are plenty that exceed this, with the most voluminous being the monumental forty-eight books of The words in Attic prose-works, now lost.16 More durable have been the seventeen books On the usefulness of parts, the fifteen On anatomical procedures, and the fourteen On the therapeutic method, to mention just a few. From the surviving large-scale works, as well as indications about those no longer extant, it is possible to discern four main approaches to their overall ordering, although given both the practical exigencies of ancient literary production and Galen’s personal predilections, there are always tendencies to disorder operating within, and against, the overarching plan and structure of any of his output. For example, the use of book rolls and dictation, not to mention the lengthy time intervals between the completion of different portions of some treatises, all militate against total coherence.17 Similarly, Galen’s tendency to digress, to follow a current train of thought through, regardless of its precise contextual fit or relevance, and to pursue polemical points at the expense of positive argumentative clarity or development, take their toll too. Nonetheless, the underlying patterns are reasonably clear. The first order is corporeal. The classic head-to-toe presentation is not Galen’s primary organisational mechanism for anatomical or physiological knowledge itself, though some of the more specific or introductory works, such as On the dissection of the nerves and On the dissection of the muscles, come close, and there is a certain downwards drift in other texts too. But it is employed to structure pathological and therapeutic material. Diseases may be arranged according to the somatic location they afflict, or are seated in, as On the affected parts (in six books) demonstrates. A remedial counterpart to this is the eleven-volume compendium On the compounding of drugs according to places (kata topous). The second approach to order is more categorical or thematic, adopting a framework from a way of breaking 16 17

Mentioned at Ord. lib. prop. 5 and Lib. prop. 17 (SM ii 90.6–9 and 124.7–8). Galen refers to a couple of works he dictated to tacheographers sent by the parties who wanted a record of the discourse in question (e.g., at Praen. 5.19–20 (CMG v 3,1 98.27–100.1) and Lib. prop. 1 (SM ii 95.21–96.1)); and, though he makes no such comments about his regular working practices, it is impossible to believe that he could have been so prolific without the kind of secretarial support employed by, for example, Pliny the Elder (Plin. Ep. 3.5).

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up the world (or medicine) that is not based so directly on the human body. Thus, the companion tract to On the compounding of drugs according to places is that ‘according to kind’ (kata gen¯e ): that is, according to an internal pharmacological typology which collects together, for example, all the emplastra (plasters), malagmata (emollients), and akopa (for pain relief and general refreshment). Diseases also have an internal typology (indeed typologies), and On the therapeutic method, for instance, operates with a division between maladies based in the homoeomerous (uniform) and anhomoeomerous (non-uniform) parts.18 The two other orders are more literary, or at least textual. One takes its structure from a pre-existing work. This is most obviously the case with Galen’s ‘phrase-by-phrase’ commentaries on Hippocratic texts (of which a good number survive), and some philosophical writings; but he also wrote summaries of, for example, the Anatomical studies of Marinus, and Heraclides of Tarentum’s seven books On the empiric sect.19 The latter apparently took a polemical approach, and other lost but decidedly hostile tracts may well have followed a pattern of roughly ‘phrase-by-phrase’ refutation. Indeed, within the extant section of Galen’s oeuvre, large portions of On the doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato are dedicated to systematic argument against the Stoic scholarch Chrysippus’ works On the soul, and On affections, as well as the promised engagement with the teachings of Galen’s twin heroes, Plato and Hippocrates; while On the natural faculties pursues a sustained critique of Erasistratus’ physiology; and it is widely believed that much of his very extensive writing on the pulse is based on that of his, heavily criticised but also heavily relied on, recent predecessor, Archigenes of Apamea (whose career at Rome peaked in the reign of Trajan).20 The second order under this heading is alphabetical (kata stoicheion), an arrangement adopted in most of the books of On the mixtures (kraseis) and properties (dynameis) of simple drugs that actually list the simples themselves, as well as in his Hippocratic glossary and (presumably) the lost lexical works, including all forty-eight volumes on words used by Attic prose-writers.21 As

18

19 20 21

The homoeomeries are those which divide into like pieces, such as blood, bone and arteries, while the anhomoeomeries are not so divisible and include compound parts and organs such as the hand, eye, heart and liver. See, e.g., MM 1.6 for a rough explanation, and also 2.6 for the associated pathological schema (x 48 and 125–6 K). On Galenic exegesis see Flemming (forthcoming); and these abridgements appear at Gal. Lib. prop. 3 and 9 (SM ii 104.12–13 and 115.14–15) respectively. On Galen and Chrysippus see Tieleman (1996) and (2003); and on Galen and Archigenes see Wellmann (1895). As suggested at Gal. Ord. lib. prop. 5 (SM ii 89.13–15).

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an order of words, the alphabet has more obvious appeal than as an order of things; but it can, and is, applied to both. The work on simples also clearly illustrates that more than one mode of organisation may be employed in a single, large-scale, literary enterprise. Its first five books lay the foundations of Galenic pharmacology in a methodical fashion: first demonstrating the fallacies and inadequacies of all current approaches to the subject, then expounding the basic building blocks of the system that is to replace them. This exposition begins by establishing that everything in the world is composed of the same four elements, which then combine to produce the humours (in a certain balance or mixture, that is krasis) in the human body on the one hand, and properties (dynameis) inherent in their mixture (krasis) in other things in the world – such as plants, earths, stones and animals – on the other.22 These dynameis can then be grouped in relation to their effect on the human body, through its own mixture of humours: primarily according to whether they are heating or cooling, drying or moistening; and secondarily according to whether they are purgative or productive, softening or hardening, and so forth. Next the things themselves, the external items that can be brought to bear, medically, on the human body, can be organised. The first partition is basically threefold, more or less into the customary categories of animal, vegetable and mineral. The plants then proceed strictly alphabetically (in books 6 to 8), while the minerals (in book 9) and animals (in books 10 and 11) take a more varied course. So, for example, earths are followed by stones, according to their own internal classification, but then come metals kata stoicheion. The animal items also initially follow their own typology (rather messily), but revert to alphabetical listing for the ‘things generated from the sea’ right at the end.23 Similarly, the works on compound pharmaka, that is those compounded out of numerous simples, comprise a primary structure, as their respective titles announce, and a secondary one, which is more textual in nature. So, within the overall arrangement by ‘place’ or ‘kind’, existing pharmacological works are excerpted and reorganised, with some Galenic comment, in the way Galen sees fit. Thus, in the books on akopa in On the compounding of drugs according to kinds, for example, chapters will be introduced along the lines of ‘akopa and myrakopa (that is with myrrh as an ingredient) recorded 22 23

For a summary of the fundamentals of Galenic pharmacology see, e.g., Scarborough (1984); and for a more detailed analysis see Harig (1974). Gal. SMT 10.1 and 11.2 (xii 247 and 369–77 K); as Barnes (1997) notes, however, this last alphabetisation is only by first letter, and is more error-prone than the others, which are pretty systematically up to the third letter (10 n. 15).

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by Asclepiades Pharmakion in his fourth book On external (drugs)’, and contain a whole sequence of recipes taken from that source, some of which may themselves have been borrowed from elsewhere.24 In much the same way, the much briefer treatise On my own books, as mentioned, begins with a chronological or biographical listing of his literary products, and then turns to a more thematic mode of organisation. It is also worth returning to the compositional complexities of On the doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato already alluded to, for these indicate the way in which more practical exigencies, and social and political considerations, operate to shape Galen’s work, at least as he tells it. The original opening of the treatise is lost, which adds to the difficulties in trying to follow its structure; but, in On my own books, Galen explains that he commenced writing it at the urging of the consular Flavius Boethus, a man who combined high political office with philosophical commitments (in his case Peripatetic).25 Boethus was an important supporter of Galen in his first stay at Rome (between 162 and 166 ce), forming a crucial part of the audience first for his oral performances and anatomical demonstrations, and then, following on from that, for his textual disquisitions and displays, initially (it appears) just as an addressee and subsequently as commissioner.26 His household also benefited from Galen’s prowess as a medical practitioner on more than one occasion, as he proudly recounts in On prognosis.27 With his wealth and class combined with culture and learning, Boethus is exactly the type of man Galen wanted to attract the attention and favour of, particularly in the early stages of his career in the imperial capital: the type of man who would (allegedly) request a work demonstrating the congruence and correctness of the views of Plato and Hippocrates on the powers that govern the human being, their number, nature and location. Boethus, however, took only the first six books of this heavyweight literary project with him when he left Rome to govern his native Syria Palestina (as well as the first book of On the usefulness of parts), where he died. Galen too left Rome, for his own reasons, and it was only some time after his return to the city where he was now, basically, going to spend the rest of his long life, that he added the final three books that were to complete the work. 24

25 26

Gal. Comp. med. gen. 7.12 (xiii 1009–32 K). This compilatory process is analysed in detail by Fabricius (1972), who also provides biographies and bibliographies for all the major authorities Galen uses, such as this Asclepiades (another reasonably recent – late-first century ce – predecessor, and not to be confused with Asclepiades of Bithynia). Gal. Lib. prop. 1 (SM ii 96.19–24; and see also 94.16–26 on Boethus). 27 Gal. Praen. 7–8 (CMG v 3,1 104.24–116.23). For more details see Nutton (1973).

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Given that about ten years must have elapsed between starting and finishing the project it is not surprising that these last volumes are on somewhat different, though certainly related topics to the earlier portion. Galen also seems to have made some later revisions to the previous parts.28 It is, however, not just time that serves as a dis-organising force in all this, nor is Boethus the only individual whose influence over the composition of the work is acknowledged. The main problem is the balance between positive presentation and polemic, a polemic that always threatens to take its own course, and often does, leading Galen away from the basic path set down for this literary enterprise. This imbalance, this tendency to slide into a systematic refutation of others, and so lose track of his own argument, is most evident in Books Three and Four of On the doctrines of Plato and Hippocrates, and is explained in the preamble to the former. He reports that he was deflected from his original scheme by an ‘eminent sophist’ who claimed that it was not possible to refute Chrysippus’ extensive arguments that only the heart is the source of the ruling power (hegemonikon) of the soul, and so the human being.29 Galen had considered that he had dealt with the matter already, as part of his general survey of previous errors on the subject – mistakes either of fact or demonstrative method – in which Chrysippus had featured, though not exclusively. But he feels forced to rise to the challenge nonetheless, to complete a more comprehensive demolition, which takes up book 3, and spills into book 4. It is not clear whether copies of books 1 and 2 were already circulating, for the anonymous sophist to react to them in this way, or perhaps more likely, whether Galen was presenting their arguments orally and was confronted in person, and in public, so that a response could not be avoided. Either way, Galen again draws attention to the external forces acting on his output. Friends and enemies, supporters and detractors, have all contributed, all have their role to play in the way he constructs his own literary career. Since previous works play such an important part in the organisation of Galen’s own, and that might be considered a challenge to the argument for the operation of a particularly Roman imperial order in them, it is necessary to examine the precedents that Galen is variously following or departing from, adapting or rejecting, rather more closely. Such a discussion also 28

29

This, at least, is the explanation offered by Ilberg for the fact that the first six books cross-refer to works only composed later (see P. De Lacy’s introduction to his edition of the PHP (de Lacy (ed.) (1984)): CMG v 4.1,2 47–8). It is also worth bearing in mind that the fate of the actual books Boethus took east with him is unclear, so Galen may have been working with something like a ‘draft’ version when he came to complete the text anyway. Gal. PHP 3.1.7 (CMG v 4.1,2 168.27); and see Rocca (2003) 17–47 for further discussion of the concept of the hegemonikon and its development.

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enables some further reflection on the manner in which Galen establishes his own patterns, which are then repeated across his oeuvre, reiterated in different works; and which do enact, both through that repetition and through their own positive character and content, his fundamental commitment to right method and good order in all things. The organisational styles already picked out illustrate his orderliness on one level, but there are deeper patterns too. the order b e h i n d the books As already mentioned, organisation capite ad calcem was common in a range of classical medical genres. The results of Herophilus’ systematic anatomical investigations in early Hellenistic Alexandria, the literary results of all his dissections and vivisections of human beings, seem to have been arranged in this manner; and the surviving anatomical summaries from the early Imperial period also tend to follow this pattern (sometimes taking a double journey from head to toe, first on the outside and then the inside).30 This corporeal system is also employed in the first part of Scribonius Largus’ Latin pharmacological work, Compounds, written between 44 and 48 ce; and further informs the prevalent ordering of pathological works in the first two centuries ce.31 These start from the division between acute and chronic diseases found (along with the external/internal split) in the Hippocratic Corpus, then work roughly downwards in each category (as was the Hippocratic practice also).32 Thus, chapters on acute diseases proceed from phrenitis (by now an illness originating in the head/brain despite its etymology) to satyriasis or diarrhoea (both ailments involving the lower parts), and coverage of chronic diseases move from skot¯oma (a head-based dizziness) and severe headache to podagra (gout, and other similar conditions), affections of the womb, and elephantiasis (a skin disease affecting the whole body, these total conditions were added on to the end of the list).33 30

31 32

33

On Herophilus see von Staden (1989) 138–241; and I would count Rufus of Ephesus, On the naming of the parts of the human being (133–167) (Daremberg-Ruelle (eds.) (1879)), as well as the relevant sections of the pseudo-Galenic Introduction and Medical definitions (10–11 and 36–60: xiv 699–720 and xix 358–62 K respectively) among these summaries. Scrib. Comp. 1–162; and see the preface of the edition by Sconocchia (ed.) (1983) for discussion of the dating (vi–vii). The Hippocratic writers focused on the acute, as in the Regimen in acute diseases, and the internal, as in On internal affections, but this clearly implies the other half of the pairing also. Rough head-to-toe orders can be seen in, e.g., On affections, and Diseases II. See Aretaeus, On the signs of acute and chronic diseases (CMG II), the anonymous treatise On acute and chronic diseases (Anonymi medici De morbis acutis et chroniis) (Garofalo (ed.) (1997)), and Caelius Aurelianus’ latinisation of Soranus’ On acute and chronic diseases (CML v, 1).

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Therapeutic works might follow these same principles (indeed the same work might cover diagnosis, aetiology and cure), or be structured around their own internal typology; which is also true of their pharmacological sub-set. The initially somatic organisation of Scribonius’ Compounds then becomes generic, for instance, and Galen clearly draws on both the ‘by place’ and ‘by kind’ modes of organisation to be found amongst his other predecessors in the field of complex drugs.34 Indeed, Archigenes composed a treatise entitled, On drugs according to kind, while the first systematic compounder of drugs, Mantias himself, perhaps produced a topological correlate in the Hellenistic period.35 In relation to simples, the animal, vegetable and mineral division is very widespread, but Galen explicitly states that in taking an alphabetical approach to ordering his plant-based materials he is imitating Pamphilus’ On plants (Peri botan¯on), though dramatically improving the quality of the contents.36 Pamphilus was a grammarian based in first-century ce Alexandria, who was familiar with alphabetisation from his other lexical and philological activities (as also was Galen of course); but, despite Galen’s implication to the contrary, it is unlikely that he was the first to apply the kata stoicheion arrangement to medical materials. Hippocratic lexicography had long co-existed with pharmacological writing among the Herophileans in Hellenistic Alexandria, so the possibilities of cross-over were certainly present earlier, and the Suda reports that Bolus of Mendes’ late third- or early second-century bce work on the sympathies and antipathies of stones was ordered kata stoicheion.37 Moreover, the author of one of the most important ancient collections of medical materials, Dioscorides of Anazarbus, suggests that alphabetisation was reasonably common among his more immediate predecessors, those who worked in the earlier part of the first century ce; a view supported by the structure of parts of the Natural history of Pliny the Elder. In outlining how his work will surpass its predecessors in terms of coverage, accuracy, reliability, precision and order, Dioscorides alleges: Mistakes were also made in the organisation of their material [i.e., that of Sextius Niger and the rest], some throwing together incompatible properties, others using a kata stoicheion arrangement which splits off genera and properties from what most resembles them. The result is almost impossible to memorise as a whole.38 34 35 36 37 38

Scrib. Comp. 163–271. On Archigenes see Fabricius (1972) 198–9; and on Mantias see Gal. SMT 6 pr. (xi 795 K) and von Staden (1989) 515–18. Gal. SMT 6 pr. (xi 792 K). Von Staden (1989) 445–62 on the Herophileans; Suda s.v. Bˆolos Mendˆesios; and see for recent discussion of the problems with Bolus’ dates and output, Dickie (1999). Dioscorides, De materia medica pr. 3 (i 2.11–15) (Wellmann (ed.) (1906–14)).

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Sextius Niger was a Roman citizen who composed medical texts in Greek in the first decades of the first century ce, and ‘the rest’ are presumably his colleagues among the ‘neoi’, the recent writers on the subject who, Dioscorides claims, are prone to different kind of errors than the ‘archaioi’, their more distant, Hellenistic, ancestors, such as Heraclides of Tarentum and Crateuas the Rootcutter.39 Whether Niger himself was among the alphabetisers or not, kata stoicheion organisation clearly extends well beyond Pamphilus, even at this juncture. A point also supported by the fact that the final book of botanical medical materials in Pliny’s Natural history contains an almost alphabetical sequence, some of its deviations indicating a Greek origin.40 Dioscorides further demonstrates that the organisation of medical knowledge, in particular the organisation of the proliferating knowledge about medically effective things in the widening world, was a topic of debate and dispute, part of the ongoing competition between ancient physicians for prestige and patients, authority and audience. Galen must have been aware of this, and indeed of Dioscorides’ position within the debate, for the Anazarbite was one of the main sources he used in his collection of simples in On the mixtures and properties of simple drugs, and he is cited elsewhere also. However, Galen makes surprisingly little reference to the points of organisational dispute themselves. In the preamble to book 6 he contrasts Dioscorides’ globalising work, in which all medical materials are included within a single text, with the more specific, thematic, texts of, for example, Mantias; but he says nothing about matters of internal structure.41 His own claim that a kata stoicheion order ‘is necessary’ for this material is never actually substantiated or supported.42 Moreover, it seems to contradict both some of his general principles and some of the more particular points made in the work itself. Galen has a basic commitment, for example, to ordering according to physis rather than nomos, that is according to real and meaningful distinctions in the world not conventional categorisations; a commitment that is related to his views on the fallibility of language and problems of terminology.43 This principle is articulated in the first five books of On the mixtures and properties of simple drugs, indeed it is encapsulated in the title itself, and various linguistic challenges are also explicitly recognised. Furthermore, Pamphilus appears as a very unlikely exemplar; one that Galen has nothing good to say about. 39 40 43

Dioscorides, De materia medica pr. 1–2 (i 1.4–2.5) (Wellmann (ed.) (1906–14)); Niger’s Greek medical writings are included in Pliny’s listing of home auctores for books 20–34 of the Natural history. 41 Gal. SMT 6 pr. (xi 794–5 K). 42 Gal. SMT 6 pr. (xi 792 K). See Daly (1967) 35–6. See, e.g., Hankinson (1994); and also Barnes (1997).

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In so far as Galen does set out to justify his catalogue of materials, and does assert its superiority over its precedents and rivals, he does so in terms of content rather than structure. His is best on account of having the greatest coverage without compromising the entry criteria; while Pamphilus (and also Xenocrates of Aphrodisias) have been much less discerning, demonstrating a woeful lack of judgement as they include, ‘old wives’ tales’, flashy but useless ‘Egyptian sorcery’ (go¯otia), and foolish incantations to mutter while collecting the herbs.44 Much, therefore, of Galen’s organisational style could actually be subsumed under a broader ‘textual’ heading. Most of his works mentioned so far have literary precedents and are structured along established lines; though Galen has amended and combined, altered and reworked those models in various ways and to varying degrees. He has also consistently expanded the material encompassed within any given medical domain or genre. His treatises tend to surpass their predecessors in size, and, if not, that may be because he treats the same topic in more than one text. The monumental works on compound pharmacology demonstrate these points particularly clearly. The early Imperial period witnessed a growth in this area, both in terms of the number of collections of compound recipes put into circulation and the number of books comprising each collection.45 None, however, can match Galen’s eighteen-book total in this area, in which everything useful from these previous efforts has been included, within a clearer, more comprehensive and systematic, structure: also borrowed, but also improved.46 That empire lies behind this growth as it leads up to, and peaks with, Galen is obvious. The physicians who composed these collections all worked in Rome (some – Galen among them – attended on the imperial court), and they all drew on the vast resources of the empire in their compositions. Ingredients from right across the Roman world, and from Rome’s trade with places beyond her borders, appear in many rich and complex remedies. So, for example, a malagma Galen takes from the writings of Andromachus the Younger (another medical figure of late-first century ce Rome), brings together Tyrrhenian wax, Illyrian iris, Cilician saffron and 44 45

46

Gal. SMT 6 pr. (xi 792 and 797–8 K). The names attached to such collections between Augustus and Galen include not only those of Archigenes, Asclepiades and Scribonius Largus, already mentioned, but also Heras of Cappadocia, the two Andromachi (Elder and Younger) and Crito, to list just the most important (see Fabricius (1972) for fuller listings); and while it is hard to prove that they were more prolific than their Hellenistic predecessors, few multivolume pharmacological works are definitely attached to the latter, in contrast to some of their sectarian writings. The closest contender seems to be Asclepiades Pharmakion who probably authored ten books, five on external and five on internal remedies: see Fabricius (1972) 192–8.

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Indian nard, not to mention more common (but still exotic) items such as cassia, myrrh and terebinth.47 It is not just diverse materials, but also a very wide range of people, who are thus gathered together and absorbed, along with their recipes, into successive compilations. Precise geographical origins are harder to discern here, but a few more unusual monikers and ethnics, such as those of the (presumably) Persian Rootcutter, Pharnaces, and Fabylla the Libyan, appear amongst crowds of mostly Greek, but also many Roman, names in Galen’s collections.48 The ways in which Galen’s literary compositions reproduce processes and patterns of empire also, crucially, go beyond their magnitude and contents into matters of structure. For the Roman Empire, like so many of the texts mentioned, was an essentially cumulative, compilatory, enterprise. Roughly contiguous territories were accumulated through a series of military victories and more peaceful power-plays, and in attaching these new acquisitions to the centre, constructing a political unity from this diversity, Rome relied heavily on existing patterns of power and governance. The old orders were not destroyed and created anew, but rather amended and adapted, refigured to fit into the overarching structure of Roman rule. This, moreover, was the traditional approach to ancient empire building, in which one of the main effects of conquest on local administrations was that they became integrated into a larger whole, rather than being radically transformed in themselves. Of course, that should not imply that nothing changed: this process of integration and reordering through compilation can be transformative in its own way, so long as it proceeds with a reasonably clear and coherent overall structure. Now Rome’s empire was a larger, and in various ways a more considered, compilation than any other; incorporating more diverse material as it stretched west as well as east, not to mention north and south, and structuring it according to its own unifying system, and in its own style. Part of what was distinctive about that style and system was its inclusiveness, the relative openness of both its politcical and cultural formations. There were limits to this inclusiveness and openness, of course, most strongly on a social level – imperial inclusion was a much more horizontal phenomenon, operating across local elites, than a vertical one – but also on a historical level, as the basic structures were determined, the fundamental principles of order established, prior to their opening up, at least on an imperial scale. Still this was a notable feature of Roman imperial rule, as the career of 47 48

Gal. Comp. med. gen. 7.7 (xiii 985–6 K). Pharnaces: xiii 204 K; Fabylla: xiii 250–1 and 341 K.

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Galen’s patron Boethus illustrates, and Galen too in his own way. For it is not just that his compositional procedures reproduce processes of empire in various rather abstract ways; it is not just that Galen’s empire of knowledge and Rome’s political empire are constructed along the same lines methodologically, and so come to resemble each other in terms of size and shape; but that there is a more positive ideological overlap too, in the rhetoric and practices of order both employ. This emerges most clearly in some of Galen’s departures from previous patterns. back to the books (and t he body) Galen, then, owes manifold debts to his predecessors, both distant and more proximate, but some of his claims to structural innovation are also justified, particularly in respect to writing about disease and cure in their generality and totality. Here Galen uses much more actively analytical classifications than was traditional. This is most obvious in On the therapeutic method, where he employs his own, distinctive, conceptual categorisation of disease as the organisational framework; eschewing the customary division between acute and chronic conditions, and also, to a considerable extent, traditional disease entities like ‘phrenitis’ or ‘podagra’. Not that these classes and items have no validity, or utility, but they have no real analytical purchase; they do not go to the heart of the matter, of what being diseased means, and what therapeutics are about. So, they float about on the surface of things, and of his text, rather than contributing to its fundamental structure. On the affected places shares some of these features too, though the claim to originality in this case rests with Archigenes, who, according to Galen, was the first to treat localised disease ‘systematically’ in his own three books by the same name; and these diseased localities are ordered roughly headto-toe.49 Galen, of course, has twice as many volumes in his text On the affected places, partly in order to give him space to correct Archigenes’ many errors. This leaves, however, the matter of Galen’s anatomy and physiology. Little has been said so far about the massively proportioned, and vitally important, works On the usefulness of parts and On anatomical procedures; except that they do not proceed capite ad calcem, and that the former was also requested by the consular Boethus. Or, at least, that is the claim made in On my own books, where it is stated that only the first book was ready to accompany Boethus to Syria, while the rest were finished (like On the 49

Gal. Loc. aff. 3.1 (viii 136 K); and see also Cris. 2.8 (145.1–146.6) (Alexanderson (ed.) (1967)).

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doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato) after Galen’s subsequent return to Rome in 169 ce.50 A rather different account appears in the opening chapter of On anatomical procedures, a text which is presented as an expanded and improved version of two books by the same name also given to the consular as he travelled East.51 These were mere notebooks, however, containing records of Galen’s anatomical observations and demonstrations (in which Boethus and other men of his social and intellectual rank had shared) so far. This programme of somatic investigation continued despite the departure of such a keen supporter, so when Galen revisited the subject of anatomy in literary form some years later, a much more detailed and accurate treatise, of greater length and clarity, resulted. The completion of On the usefulness of parts in the meantime – indeed its completion in time to send, as a whole, to a still alive and well Boethus, in this version of events – also contributed to the shape and structure of On anatomical procedures. Whichever account is to be believed, the connection between the two major works is a clear and crucial one, and the most immediate impact of On the usefulness of parts on On anatomical procedures, as Galen himself emphasises, is precisely on its order. The original anatomical pairing had taken their arrangement (taxis) from the books of Marinus, which Galen had already epitomised (in four books); but the new improved version will instead follow that of On the usefulness of parts, and so begin with the hand.52 Before turning to the various reasons Galen gives for this point of departure, it is worth saying a bit more about Marinus and the early Imperial intellectual and bibliographical trends he represents. For Marinus, active around the turn of the first into the second century ce, and perhaps based in Alexandria, is a key figure in the medical world of the Roman Empire, certainly for Galen, but also more widely. Galen credits him with reviving, or recovering, the study of anatomy, which had been in a state of neglect since the early Hellenistic era, meaning that Marinus revived the actual practice of dissection and vivisection (albeit on animal rather than human subjects), and pursued a systematic project of investigation into the body through such methods.53 There is little independent evidence to corroborate Galen’s claims about Marinus, but all that survives of his anatomical studies – that is the book-by-book outline provided by Galen as he describes his own abridgment of the text, and his scattered references to more concrete matters of content – indicates that here is expansion and elaboration, not summary and consolidation, of the canonical doctrines 50 53

51 Gal. AA 1.1 (ii 216–18 K). 52 Gal. AA 1.3 (ii 234 K). Gal. Lib. prop. 1 (SM ii 96.19–24). Gal. PHP 8.1 (CMG v 4.1,2 480.28–30); and see Rocca (2003) 42–6 for further discussion.

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of Herophilus and Erasistratus.54 The magnitude of Marinus’ undertaking (his Anatomical books were twenty in number), along with its innovative organisation (definitely not capite ad calcem – it begins, somatically, with the skin), and the points of positive contribution to anatomical knowledge Galen picks out, all suggest an ambition to outstrip, both quantitatively and qualitatively, what had gone before. Marinus’ influence is also demonstrated by his pupils, most prominent among whom were Quintus and Numisianus. They took up the anatomical baton, and passed it on to their own students in turn: men who were in some cases Galen’s teachers, in others his antagonists, those whose dominant position in the field Galen wished to seize for himself.55 The physician whom he most wanted to depose, and replace, in this respect was Lycus of Macedon, who seems to have died just before Galen arrived in Rome, but who left behind a set of anatomical texts that were widely considered to embody the current state of the art.56 Part of Lycus’ appeal was his direct pedagogical descent from Marinus – via Quintus – but Galen accuses him of squandering that inheritance, indulging in a kind of negligent and degenerative plagiarism.57 He is reliant on the words of the master, but managed to introduce numerous errors and omissions none the less. Still, Galen deemed it worthwhile to epitomise Lycus, Anatomical books (nineteen in number), and to adumbrate their contents in On my own Books, before going on to list his works On what Lycus did not know about anatomy, and On differences from Lycus on anatomy.58 This outline serves to show that, while Lycus returned to the head-to-toe principle, he added descriptions of ‘the dissection of the uterus of a dead woman in which there is a foetus’, as well as books on the anatomy of the newborn.59 In finding his own physiological order, therefore, Galen is reacting against Lycus as well as absorbing and surpassing Marinus. Neither capite ad calcem, nor Marinian, structure was permissible, though he certainly includes accounts of the dissection of pregnant goats in On anatomical procedures, and also utilises Marinus’ more thematic approach to organisation 54 55 56 57 58 59

Gal. Lib. prop. 3 (SM ii 105.22–108.14, with the lacuna in the Greek filled in the Arabic, see Boudon (2002) which includes an English translation; and, e.g., AA 9.3 (ii 716 K) and Nerv. diss. 5 (ii 837 K). See, e.g., Gal. AA 1.1 and 8.3 (2.217–18 and 660 K). On Lycus’ reputation in Rome see e.g. Lib. prop. 2 (SM ii 101.26–102.10). Gal. AA 14.1 (i 232.14–233.5) (Simon (ed.) (1996)). This section of Lib. prop. is preserved only in Arabic, see Boudon (2002) 16–17 for an English translation. The translation is Boudon’s. Despite the phrasing of the headings, which could be taken to imply not only adult human dissection, but also dissection and vivisection of human children, Galen’s subsequent discussion refers only to animal dissection and vivisection, mostly of goats (see AA 12.3–6; i 144.15–154.7) (Simon (ed.) (1906)).

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(Marinus’ text, for example, treats the skin and flesh, and veins and arteries, separately, as global rather than local entities). There are some borrowings and reworkings then, but within a distinct overall architecture: an expanded architecture that took the Imperial revival in anatomy further into physiology (the two were always entwined in antiquity), by producing this interlocked pair of heavyweight texts – thirty-two books in total – and so really dominating this territory; and an architecture that is essentially ideological in its approach to the ordering of knowledge about the human body and its functioning, an approach that has much in common with the ordering of empire. So Galen explains, and emphasises, in the opening sequence of On the usefulness of parts. Just as each living thing is a unity in the sense that it has clear borders, is not joined to any other living thing, so also are the parts (moria) of which it is composed. Except that these parts – such as the eye, nose and tongue – though having their own boundaries, having their own integrity, are also joined up, joined together to make the whole living thing of which they comprise the parts. These parts are varied in type and size, but the usefulness (chreia) of each is related to, depends on, the soul (psych¯e ): for ‘the body is the instrument (organon) of the soul’.60 Living things with different souls will, accordingly, diverge with respect to their parts. So, the horse has strong hooves and a handsome mane to fit the swift and proud character of its soul, and the fierce lion has teeth and claws while the timid hare is quick but defenceless in its bodily form; but what about man? Man is clever (sophos), and even more decisively, shares in the divine (theion), so Nature (physis) provided him with hands, the best instrument in peace and war. He has no need for teeth or claws, for wielding a sword or spear is much more effective. Nor does he require speed, since, with his skilful hands, he has tamed the horse, which provides not only a means of escape but also a strong position for attack. Indeed, additional protection is offered by the fashioning of clothes and armour, the building of houses and fortifications; while the construction of hunting nets and fish traps demonstrates his lordship of all the creatures of land, air and water. The hands of peaceful (eir¯enikoi) and social (politikoi) human beings, moreover, write laws, raise altars and statues to the gods, build ships, make flutes, fire-tongs and all other instruments of the arts. They even (and perhaps most importantly) compose works about the arts (technai), record their reflections on, and theories of, various crucial areas of human activity in writing. 60

Gal. UP 1.2 (i 1.13–14) (=Helmreich (ed.) (1907–9)).

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It is not, therefore, that man is the most intelligent of the animals because of his hands (as Anaxagoras had argued); but that, because of his superior intellect he has hands. Indeed, it is the combination of hands and reason that is vital, it is their conjunction that has produced the technai and all other human accomplishments. Rationality, as Galen puts it, ‘is an art for the arts in the soul’, while the hand, ‘is an instrument (organon) for the instruments in the body’.61 Furthermore, the hand is ideally constructed for this purpose, with its opposable thumb, its flexible fingers, its delicacy and strength and so on. The detailed elaboration of the hand’s excellence takes up the rest of the first book, except for the closing paragraph, in which Galen outlines how the work will now proceed.62 There will, he says, be movement from hand to arm in the next book, then he will ‘explain the skill of Nature (physis) displayed in the legs’, before advancing to the organs of nutrition, then of the pneuma (warm air that has become integrated into somatic functioning), reaching the head in Books eight and nine. More detailed discussion of the eyes and vision, then the rest of the face, will follow, with a journey down and then up the spine to the shoulders in books 12 and 13. The next pair of books cover the generative parts and pelvis; while the sixteenth broadens out to encompass the instruments common to the whole body – the arteries, veins and nerves – and the final book is labelled ‘an epode’, where all the parts, of body and text, are brought together, the overall utility of both is expounded. For the work itself is useful not just to physicians and philosophers, but also to all men, who will be brought into a better understanding of themselves and their universe by reading it. In particular, they will be brought into an appropriately pious attitude towards ‘the power responsible for usefulness itself’.63 The journey around the human body that On the usefulness of parts describes does, therefore, possess a certain geographical logic: arms, legs, up the torso to the head then down the spine to the pelvis, with two general, totalising books to round things off after the focused start with the hand. However, the real architecture of the text, what gives it shape and structure, is clearly more conceptual and more ideological. It begins with a definition of the parts in relation to their determining whole, in relation to the specifically – rationally, socially, peacefully, intelligently – ensouled human being, and with an assumption about the existence of a beneficent creative force in the universe – Nature (or the Demiurge) – who 61 62 63

Gal. UP 1.4 (Helmreich i 6.15–17); cf. Arist. Part. an. 687a7–18. Gal. UP 1.25 (Helmreich i 63.9–64.7). Gal. UP 17.2 (Helmreich ii 449.17–18); and see Frede (2002) for further exploration of the theme of piety in the UP.

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has fashioned all living things in accordance with the character and faculties of their souls; indeed, has made each part not only useful, and appropriate, but also for the best, absolutely optimally, in terms of the whole.64 Optimal in more general terms too, for there is a clear hierarchy of beings at work here also, with man at the top, distinguished sharply from some of his closest rivals (such as the ape) on occasion.65 The order of the work thus follows on from these points of cosmic order: that is why it opens with the hand, why the organs of nutrition, or generation, are grouped together, that is what makes sense of the sequence, just as the sequence itself makes sense of man. ‘In On the usefulness of parts my aim was to explain the structure of all the human organs, as far as concerns the art’, Galen asserts in one of the many introductory sequences in On anatomical procedures: In my present work, my aim is twofold; first that each bodily part, the actions of which I explained in the former work, may be accurately observed; and second to promote the proper end of the art.66

The objective of providing the means to see, to observe through dissection, the explanation of each part’s function and excellence as already described, clearly involves following the same structure (taxis), as Galen repeatedly stresses; but this is not just a literary pattern, it reflects the cosmic order too, as is also frequently reiterated.67 The hand, as ‘most characteristic’ of man, is the place to start, and the legs ‘naturally’ come next, as the instrument of man’s distinctive upright posture.68 Then there is a slight deviation from the established order, as Galen covers the whole anatomy of the muscles of the head and torso, and then returns to the pattern of On the usefulness of parts, with a final, foetal, addition. This signals the impact of previous works, not his own, on the text, and indeed, there is a running critique of contemporary anatomical inadequacies throughout. The reason the muscles receive such treatment, for example, is that, despite their importance for both understanding the general workings of the body, and ensuring successful surgical intervention, they are woefully neglected by current practitioners who deem them unworthy of serious attention.69 Vigorous polemic and self-promotion are permanent features of the Galenic project, but so too is the Roman empire, and this comes very clearly 64 65 67 69

On this optimising notion (and its problems) see, e.g., Hankinson (1989). 66 Gal. AA 4.1 (ii 415–16 K). Gal. UP 1.22 (Helmreich i 58.13–59.20) 68 Gal. AA 2.3 and 4.1 (ii 291 and 415–16 K). See, e.g., Gal. AA 1.3, 2.3, 4.1 (ii 234, 291, 417 K). Gal. AA 4.1 (ii 416–19 K).

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to the fore in On the usefulness of parts, ably supported by On anatomical procedures. Indeed it is possible to figure the former as a discourse about Empire. Its opening definition of a body part, morion, as something distinct but joined up with others, something that has its own identity, but within a wider framework, as it is the whole that determines its function and makes it useful, works well also for an imperial part, a province. The similarities are reinforced by the role of the soul in this picture: either in the general, unified, form in which it appears in the introductory sections of On the usefulness of parts, or its more specific, ruling aspect – hegemonikon – which also makes an occasional appearance in the same work. The basic point, however, is that there is something in charge of all the parts, which has a somatic location, in the brain in Galen’s view, and provides a kind of centralised government for the body, as the emperor does for the Empire.70 All forms of sensation and perception are communicated to the brain through the sensory (aisth¯etika) nerves, while out along the motor (kin¯etika) or deliberative (prohair¯etika) nerves goes the signal for voluntary movement, either in response, or just in general. The central site, or source (arch¯e ), of this network, the hegemonikon itself, has to be engaged in this process, everything has to go through the centre; and it was against this assumption that the key concept of ‘the reflex’, the idea that action could start and finish at the somatic periphery was developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.71 Patterns of imperial governance seem to be replicated here too, then. The model of provincial report, or petition, then imperial response, of everything going through the centre, is somatically re-enacted. And though there are some decentralising, or, more accurately, multifocal tendencies in the Galenic body, as the brain is not the only bodily arch¯e but is accompanied by at least two others – the heart which is the source of the arterial system and the liver which is the source of the venous network – these can also be integrated into the imperial vision.72 For it is lower level administrative activities that are located at these sites: the management of the basic processes of nutrition and respiration, for example, the ongoing vitalisation, and integration of the body, just as the more mundane business of maintaining the Empire went on outside Rome. Then there is the figure of the 70

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The analogy is made explicit by, e.g., Florus (2.14.5–6), who speaks of Augustus establishing his monarchic rule like that of the soul (anima) over the imperial body (imperii corpus), and on this notion more widely see McEwen (2003). See Canguilhem (1955). The Ars med. has four archai, with the testicles joining the more standard three, which led to questions being raised about its authenticity: see Kollesch (1988). Her doubts are answered by Boudon (1996).

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beneficent and powerful creator – Nature or the Craftsman – who stands above all this, who underwrites the coherence and explicability of the entire system, who gives it meaning, makes sense of it all; that is, who shares some of the same ideological space as the emperor, and also the gods; as indeed both creator and ruler are divine. If it is objected that this is to produce two emperors: the practical rule of the soul has now been displaced by the ideative domination of the Demiurge, then Galen would agree that this is a problem. He wanted and tried to bring the two together, to merge or at least clearly articulate them, in On the formation of the foetus, but found it difficult, particularly in terms of giving his conceptual understanding concrete form.73 Moreover, it could also be said that the divisibility of the emperor as man and god, functional and figurative autocrat, was an issue in the Roman world more broadly. Still, these reiterations, echoes, of empire in medical form, should not be overplayed. The match is not perfect, there is no exact homology, and many of the key themes and concepts on the medical side, go back not only to Ptolemaic Alexandria (an imperial capital after all), but as far as democratic Athens also. The Demiurge is borrowed from Plato, as also the tripartition of the soul, though many Aristotelian and Stoic ideas and interpretations have also become involved in Galen’s system. The centralised conceptualisation of somatic function and control, the archai and their networks, belong originally to Herophilus and Erasistratus, though not entirely identically. This too has been added to, amended and reshaped, since: perhaps most importantly through an ongoing engagement with the pneumatology (though not the cardio-centrism) of the Stoics. Galen’s version probably owes a particular debt to the Stoicising medical lineage founded by Athenaeus of Attaleia, and continued by Archigenes of Apamea (among others), in this respect.74 In neither case does Galen himself bring much that is new and original to the mix, except in joining them up, in the particularities of the far more encompassing combination in which they participate. But that is to bring things back to the Roman Empire once again, back to its own processes of formation, organisation and integration. To the Empire as an essentially synthetic political and cultural production itself, and one 73

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Gal. Foet. form.4–5 (CMG v 3,3 78.12–90.26). The question is: how is the generic, cosmic design and creativity of Physis enacted, realised, individually in the construction of the foetus? The direct involvement of Physis, on the one hand, and control and guidance by the rational soul, on the other, are the two initially most attractive possibilities, but neither is satisfactory, and Galen is left admitting uncertainty somewhere between the two, unsure how to link the Demiurge and the controlling, causative powers in each human being. On Athenaeus and ‘the pneumatikoi’ see, e.g., Nutton (2004) 202–5.

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that fostered further intellectual synthesis within its borders. The development of ‘syncretism’, or ‘eclecticism’ – the pooling of theoretical and conceptual resources, as sectarian boundaries softened (but did not disappear) – in medicine, philosophy and other fields of knowledge and understanding, from the first-century bce onwards, has been much remarked on.75 And while the earlier, derogatory, interpretations of both the phenomenon itself and the role of Rome in its appearance have been largely discarded, a sense of connection between the two persists: Rome, the expansion and consolidation of Roman power in the Mediterranean, had some role to play in making a wider range of options available, concurrently and inclusively, to those engaged in a whole host of intellectual endeavours, with divergent approaches. It was, of course, the conflict between Rome and Mithridates that broke the line of authoritative descent in the Athenian philosophical schools, and so disrupted their claims to exclusive ownership of the ideas, and writings, of their founders and successive lineages. Nor was it just philosophical authority that was dispersed and re-located at that time; Actium marked a shift in the centre of medical (and other scholarly) gravity from Alexandria to Rome. More broadly and abstractly, the Roman Empire (following on from its Hellenistic forerunners) encouraged a kind of universalism that is clearly reflected in a variety of intersecting discourses which flourished in the Imperial period. As Rome forged a rough political unity from its conquests, it helped to engender a single community of truth. The diverse sources of information and interpretation it held within itself, historically, geographically and ideatively, all shared a certain status, and so could be drawn on, mobilised, in the service of a range of different systems and projects.76 This was not, of course, a world of equality. Some contributions might be adjudged to be more successful or useful than others, and the point was to prioritise, to select, combine and organise, according to individual allegiances, principles and objectives; but in a more flexible and inclusive environment than before. Which is to return the discussion to matters of order, matters which become more pressing given the scale of this imperial community of truth; the sense in which the Empire made more resources available to those involved in generating and mapping knowledge and 75

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The now standard study of ‘eclecticism’ is the collection edited by Dillon and Long (eds.) (1988); see also Sedley (1989); and, e.g., Gill (2003) for discussion of how these terms are now understood in the context of Roman Stoicism. Galen is an established participant in these ‘eclectic’ evolutions. So, at least, many active in a range of intellectual spheres clearly felt; but there were also dissenters, continuing partisans of more particular paths to truth, such as Alexander of Aphrodisias, though he was certainly not entirely unaffected by contemporary trends.

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understanding concretely, practically, as well as abstractly and ideologically. Amongst this wealth of imperial resources are, however, organisational forms, patterns of thought and practice, structures of meaning and existence, which provide the means to meet these challenges. Galen draws on, adopts and adapts many of these approaches to order – old and new, medically established, or more externally derived – in his works, and the contours, the texture, of the Roman Empire can be seen both in some specific cases, and in this plurality itself. So, there are some distinctly imperial forms of organisation manifest, textual orders which are original to, or more positively derived from, Rome’s empire, and there is a general revelling in its encompassing power, its gathering up, mixing and maintenance of multiple traditions. Moreover, as countless critics of ‘colonial discourse’ in other times and places have emphasised, this kind of textual participation in the patterns of empire serves to strengthen imperial rule regardless of actual commitment.77 Even if Galen is just taking his cue, his models and metaphors, from the way the world is and works, is simply utilising the available means of persuasion, and modes of understanding, his re-inscription of the surrounding structures of domination, his particular retelling of imperial stories, reinforces them through repetition, through the display of their efficacy, through the exclusion of other possibilities. There are some indications of commitment to be found too. Not in terms of explicit political allegiance, though Galen’s association with and praise of emperors like Marcus Aurelius and Septimius Severus, as well as his involvement with such leading men of the empire as Boethus, should not be discounted here;78 but in terms of cosmic adherence and alignment, as On the usefulness of parts illustrates. In a structural sense, and in respect to scale, Galen’s worldview has a lot in common with that of Rome’s rulers. His position and perspective are Roman imperial creations, and, though his theoretical ambitions may be more traditional, many of his ideas about good order converge with the Roman imperial order. On a fundamental level, moreover, he recognises and accepts that, and that recognition is a mutual, and mutually fruitful, one. Now, Galen’s Hellenism has been rather muted in this discussion of the order in the books. The fact that his empire of knowledge is in many ways a Greek cultural construction has been left largely unremarked, not subject to much analytical scrutiny so far. After all, all the formulations of the iatrik¯e 77 78

See, e.g., the collection of essays edited by Gates (1986). See, e.g., Gal. Praen. 11.1–10 (CMG v.8.1 126.16–130.10) on Marcus and Ther. pis. II (xiv 218–19 K) on Severus.

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techn¯e and the philosophical debates he engages with, all the organisational precedents and literary materials he draws on, were at least articulated and written in Greek, if not by Greeks, nor indeed otherwise uncontaminated by things Roman and imperial. However, these latter caveats are crucial, for they clearly demonstrate the complications, the problems, which attend on the very category of Greek culture, or knowledge, itself in the Roman Empire. Some further exploration of these issues will, therefore, help to illustrate the depth of Galen’s inevitably imperial entanglements, as they are also shared with, or follow on from those involved in similar intellectual projects around, or before him. th e greek ord er in the books? Galen’s world of knowledge was one to which freeborn Roman citizens, of impeccably Italian stock, had long contributed, in Greek – as Sextius Niger had done in the field of medicine, as well as his friend Julius Bassus – or otherwise.79 Dioscorides, moreover, labels both Niger and Bassus ‘Asclepiadeans’ (followers of the innovative physician and medical thinker, Asclepiades of Bithynia, who had found fame and influence in late Republican Rome), so their participation in the Greek medical tradition was not merely linguistic, a point that Galen himself reinforces with his own respectful reference to Niger in his discussion of pharmacological predecessors and their organisational tactics in On the mixtures and properties of simple drugs.80 Indeed, Galen groups Niger together with Dioscorides, Heraclides and Crateuas, without making any particular distinction between them. Still, Dioscorides himself hints that Niger may have paid more attention to Italian flora than others had done (though without the requisite accuracy); and his ethnic identity was not irrelevant to Pliny the Elder either, who (implicitly) casts him as a traitor to his Quirital status.81 Insofar as Galen engages with Niger as a medical authority, one who may indeed have presented his simples kata stoicheion, just as the Pergamene did, this is then a rather complexly, and surely not exclusively, Hellenic encounter. 79

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Bassus’ Greek medical writings appear alongside Niger’s in Pliny’s lists of authorities in book 1 of the HN (for books 20–7 and 33–4); and he is referred to by Caelius Aurelianus as his friend (CP 3.16.134). Dioscorides, De materia medica pr.2 (i 1.20–2.5) (Wellmann (ed.) (1906–14)); Gal. SMT 6 pr. (xi 797 K). Dioscorides, De materia medica pr. 3 (i 2.5–8) (Wellmann (ed.) (1906–14)); Plin. NH 29.17, where Niger is not actually named amongst those few amongst the Quirites to have practised the medical art and ‘immediately fled to the Greeks/statim ad Graecos transfugae’, but given that Pliny explicitly lists his (and Bassus’) Greek medical writings amongst the home authorities in book 1, the direction in which the finger points is pretty clear.

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Scribonius Largus poses the question of how the Greek status of Galen’s (or, indeed, anyone else’s) knowledge is to be judged still more acutely. On the one hand, he has a Roman name, his only surviving work is in Latin and it was addressed to a freedman of the Emperor Claudius.82 On the other hand, Scribonius locates himself firmly within the Greek medical tradition in the dedicatory epistle which prefaces his Latin collection of recipes, and the form, contents and (as has already been mentioned) organisation of those recipes, broadly fits that Hellenic bill, though several members of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, from Octavia to Messalina, have joined the names which give authority and credence to the remedies provided and there are other signs of a certain Roman ambience too.83 The general point about the character of Scribonius’ prescriptions is, however, again emphasised by their Galenic intersections. A number of the same recipes, explicitly attached to the name, and indeed books, of Scribonius, feature in both Galen’s works of compound pharmacology, and there is further, tacit, overlap of material too; though this relationship is most likely an indirect one, the result of Scribonius and Galen sharing sources, or just the common currency of certain items in the pharmaceutical repertoire, such as the Mithridatic antidote or theriac.84 Most of the recipes positively attributed to Scribonius arrived in Galen’s pharmacological compilations via the earlier treatises of Asclepiades Pharmakion, but that is not entirely the case, and it serves only to defer the question of access.85 If not Galen, then did Asclepiades, and perhaps other Greek physicians of his generation in late-first century ce Rome, read Latin and use and incorporate Latin medical writings? It should be said, again, that Scribonius’ is not the only Roman name to feature in Galen’s works by any means, especially in his collections of compound pharmaka, though explicit literary, rather than just proprietorial or practical, reference is rarer. The only other solidly Roman author with any real medical presence in Galen is Aelius Gallus, the Augustan prefect of Egypt and invader/explorer of Arabia. Andromachus the Younger, explicitly takes various recipes ‘from 82

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The dedicatee is C. Iulius Callistus, a powerful freedman who successfully made the transition from Caligula’s to Claudius’ service before his death in (or before) 51 ce (his demise is rather enigmatically mentioned in the epitome of Dio Cass. 61.33.3). Scrib. Comp. 59: Octavia’s dentifrice; 60: Messalina’s, also used by Augustus (35.5–10 and 11–23 Sconocchia). See Gal. Comp. med. loc. and Comp. med. gen. (xii 683, 764, 774 K; xiii 51, and 737–8, 828 K) for the (rough) reappearance of Scrib. Comp. 51/2; 27; 26; 75; and 223; 247/8 respectively. There are other explicit Galenic citations not found in the Comp. All those recipes explicitly taken ‘from the (books) of Scribonius’ (xii 764 and 774; xiii 314 and 828 K) come via Asclepiades, but there are more attributions than that.

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his books’, and there are other attributions too.86 It is also worth mentioning that Galen criticises this Andromachus (in contrast to his father) on one occasion for using a Latin, rather than Greek, plant name in a recipe for theriac.87 His competence in Latin seems assured, therefore, and a similar capability is likely for Asclepiades too; but an equally strong case can be made for the Greek proficiency of Scribonius and Gallus. Indeed it has been argued that Greek was Scribonius’ mother tongue, that he was a Greek freedman who wrote the Compounds in Latin to curry imperial favour, and that Galen preserves a more linguistically representative sample of his literary output.88 Such a view is, however, based on assumption and stereotyping rather than any actual evidence, and more recent scholarship has favoured freeborn Roman citizen status, with perhaps Sicilian origins.89 Even without such a bilingual background, Scribonius’ facility with, and mastery of, his Greek material, is manifest in his surviving work anyway, and he could easily have written works in Greek as a second language. Gallus too: as a well-educated Roman aristocrat whose cultural and intellectual interests are indicated by his association with Strabo as well as his medical forays, Greek composition would certainly have been well within his compass.90 The real point to take from all these possibilities, this shifting of language and perspective, is, as Vivian Nutton has said, ‘the ease with which Latin and Greek information could now be interchanged’, an interchangeability which obviously puts the integrity of both categories into question.91 This reciprocality, this sharing, goes beyond information. Both Scribonius and Dioscorides, for example, associate themselves (rather loosely) with the Roman army as a vehicle through which knowledge of the medical riches of the Roman Empire can be acquired, and it is also worth noting that Dioscorides had both a Roman patron and Roman citizenship (whether inherited or acquired).92 Amongst his teachers Scribonius counts 86

87 89 90

91 92

This is assuming that all the Gallus references, except that to ‘Marcus Gallus the Asclepiadean’ (xiii 179 K) are to Aelius, even when not actually thus specified, which is not completely certain, though reasonably secure. The literary references in Galen are then to be found at xii 625; xiii 28, 77, 202, 556 and 838 K; and see also xii 625, 738 and 784; xiii 29, 138, 310, and 472; xiv 114, 158, 189, 203 K. 88 See, e.g., Schonack (1912) and Kind (1921). Gal. Ant. 1.7 (xiv 44 K). Kudlien (1986) esp. 23–5; Langslow (2000) 51–3; and, for a more Sicilian perspective, Nutton (2004) 172. Strabo accompanied his ‘friend and companion’ Gallus on tours around Egypt (Strab, e.g., 2.5.12; 11.11.5; 17.1.29–46), and also described his Arabian campaign; but whether this description was based on a spoken or written account, and in what language, is unclear. This point, and the general question of Strabo’s competence in Latin, is discussed in Dueck (2000) 87–96. Nutton (2004) 172. Scribonius was part of Claudius’ British expedition, in some capacity (Comp. 163: 79.20–22 Sconoocchia); and Dioscorides (infamously) refers to his ‘soldierly life’ (De Materia Medica pr.4: i

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both Trypho, presumably the (Elder) Trypho, who had come to Rome from Cretan Gortyn to make his name in surgery, and Vettius Valens, a Roman eques whose medical attendance on the empress Messalina was to get him into trouble; and perhaps also Apuleius Celsus of Centuripae who was certainly Vettius’ praeceptor.93 So, not only was medical education – both teaching and learning – a mixed affair in imperial Rome, but so too was medical service at the imperial court. Many of the texts Galen engages with, reacts against and draws on, come out of this mix, have been shaped by their contact with the institutions and instruments of Roman power, regardless of their language. There is a sense in which learned medicine had already been imperialised, in its scope and structure, its human and material resources, its social location and associations, long before Galen, and he does not reject those developments, that inheritance, as such. He does, of course, deploy the classical Greek past – most especially his interpretation of Hippocratic doctrine – as a basic measure against which to judge all that has followed; but he is well aware that there have been considerable advances, as well as plenty of wrong turnings, since. It is doctrinal and methodological, not temporal or cultural conformity that is the key. Starting from Hippocratic foundations, Galen seeks to build a system that, for example, integrates not only the crucial anatomical discoveries of Herophilus and Erasistratus, but also the gains of Marinus and his more diligent followers; that incorporates both Hellenistic and Roman expansions of the therapeutic repertoire. And, in many ways, it is the newer arrivals who have had the greatest impact on the organisation of his works, the order in the books, even if it is far behind them that Galen claims his most fundamental allegiances lie. Still, the shape of On anatomical procedures owes more to Marinus (even Lycus) than to Herophilus. Archigenes appears to be the literary model followed, not only in On the affected places, but also in Galen’s main sphygmological treatises; and his reliance on the more recent, and more manifestly Romanised, pharmacological texts for both material and order, on a number of levels, has also been repeatedly revealed. Even his style of Hippocratic commentary may be a Roman Imperial phenomenon.94

93

94

2.18) (Wellmann (ed.) (1906–14)). His patron was Laecanius Bassus; and his citizenship is implied by his name – Pedanius (or Pedacius) Dioscorides: on all these issues see Scarborough and Nutton (1982). For Trypho see Scrib. Comp. 175 (and also, e.g., Celsus 6.5.3 and 7.pr.3); Valens appears in the index; and Apuleius in 94 and 171 (Sconocchia (ed.) (1983): 83.8; 9.18; 49.17 and 81.22 – with apparatus – respectively). Though Hippocratic interpretation began in Hellenistic Alexandria, the interests there seem to have been more lexicographical, and the only surviving representative of this exegetical phase – Apollonius

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Certainly Galen’s general interpretation and understanding of Hippocratic doctrine, his particular construction of this crucial past authority, owes much to his present: most directly to his own teachers, but also to wider recent trends in learned medicine.95 It is no accident that the previous exegete he speaks most highly of is the Trajanic physician Rufus of Ephesus, who seems to have shared many of Galen’s key commitments in respect to both Hippocrates and the medical art more broadly.96 Galen’s Hippocratism provided a foundational link with the prestigious Greek past, therefore, but not in such a way as to occlude subsequent developments, the continuity and cogency of classical medical history right up to the time of his own didaskaloi. Rather the reverse: though much rubbish and error has to be rejected and corrected, Galen wants to mobilise the more valuable and worthwhile aspects of this continuity and mould it into an upward spiral. Post-classical progress, properly assessed, acquired and managed, allows him, with all his skills and talents, to return to the Hippocratic point of departure at a level far above that at which the great man himself was forced, by historical circumstance, to operate. Galen has, therefore, much invested in the association, the complicity, of past and present; and he experiences little nostalgia for archaic forms of textual organisation, for Hippocratic styles and structures, for the inconcinnities and disorder of the Hippocratic Corpus itself.97 Medicine has come a long way since then, even if faith should be kept with the Hippocratic founding principles of the art. More generally, moreover, Galen is uninterested in denying the fact that Greek culture is now contained within the Roman Empire, has been shaped and structured by Roman power. What he does attempt to do is create, through repeated acts of evaluation and emphasis right across his oeuvre, a certain moral topography of empire that is distinct from its political patterning, and gives ethical precedence to things Hellenic. These patterns mostly co-exist, rather than confronting each other, indeed, they sometimes intertwine and overlap, as well as occasionally conflicting, and, it has to be said, this is all part of the way the Roman Empire worked. Still, insofar as Galen does essay some kind of disaggregation of things Greek from things Roman, or at least tries

95 96 97

of Citium’s commentary on the Hippocratic text On joints – is a paraphrase, rather than a ‘phrase by phrase’ exposition, of the work, such had become fashionable by Galen’s time. On Galen’s particular debt to his teachers see Manetti and Roselli (1994) esp. 1580–93. Gal. Ord. lib. prop. 3 (SM ii 86.13–87.23). See Sluiter (1995) for discussion of Galen’s attitude to Hippocratic language and style. He does generally try and defend it, but his defensive posture is itself indicative of the difficulties, which he certainly acknowledges. See also Langholf (2004) for discussion of the ‘chaotic’ textual structure of many Hippocratic treatises.

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to impose a more Hellenic order of knowledge on the hybrid formations of empire, it is to be found in the taxic endeavours directed at his own work, at his own oeuvre and the art it enacts, the endeavours with which this essay began. These now need further examination, in conclusion. the order o f the bo ok s So far the scale and ambition of Galen’s overall knowledge project – his drive to cover and connect all the parts and aspects of medicine and their philosophical foundations or framings, as well as the various linguistic issues implicated in the literary presentation of both – has mainly been mapped on to the same features – the reach, scope and integrity – of the Roman Empire. More implicit have been their more theoretical, conceptual underpinnings, as Galen draws on the systemic projects of the most influential currents of Hellenistic thought, the Stoics and the Epicureans. It is these schools that explicitly articulated the ideal of the fully integrated, holistic, philosophical system, in which all the relevant material, methods, approaches and understandings, are encompassed within well-articulated parts that fit together in a seamless whole; and leading figures within them, most especially Chrysippus within Stoicism, attempted to deliver on that promise in literary form. The Empire, however, enabled and encouraged Galen to exceed these previous efforts in various ways; as it had already acted on other Greek authors involved in large-scale literary projects of knowledge generation, organisation and management under the Principate. The textual, and conceptual, assemblages of Strabo and Plutarch, for example, or indeed Galen’s older contemporary, Ptolemy, all illustrate the ways in which Rome continued to expand Hellenistic horizons, to augment resources and multiply the programmatic possibilities, make available more combinations and conjunctions of ideas, disciplines and genres.98 Traces of the same trajectory can be seen in medicine, despite the loss of so much material from the generations preceding Galen. The early imperial growth in pharmacological and anatomical writings has already been noted, for instance, and there were also renewed debates about the proper partition of the medical art at this time, about how the more synthetic enlargement of its ‘rationalist’ traditions should be managed.99 The unity of the techn¯e remained a 98

99

On Strabo in this context see, e.g., Clarke (1999); for Plutarch see, e.g., Jones (1971); Duff (1999). Ptolemy is less well served as a cultural, rather than scientific, figure, but his disciplinary and methodological combinations are certainly distinctive. On these debated divisions in the Imperial period see, e.g., Flemming (2000) 90–1 and 185–196.

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fundamental commitment, but its increased scope and content, together with the way in which certain concepts, theories and approaches were increasingly held in common, put more emphasis on its internal divisions, on the formation and fit of the parts of medicine, as essential to the maintenance of both the control and coherence of, and identity and difference within, the art.100 The challenge for Galen, as also for these other writers, whether medical or not, was, therefore, to control and even harness this excess. Galen wanted to exploit the Roman Empire in order to surpass his Hellenistic predecessors, while remaining true to the Hellenic principles which enabled him to assert that he had outstripped them, on their own terms, rather than entering a different competition. Success in this endeavour also provided something attractive to sell back to the Roman Empire itself, as the best, most advanced and complete rendition of the field; a knowledge project which has drawn on the resources of Rome and has something to offer in return, in the service of Roman power. Galen (and Ptolemy) make that offer much less explicitly than Strabo (or Plutarch), for example, but it is still there: the tacit presumption that encompassing and ordering the whole medical art together with all the neighbouring areas of expertise and understanding on which it depends, will be of benefit to society more broadly, and could strengthen a similarly constructed political formation. What Galen shares, more openly, with authors such as Strabo and Plutarch is an insistence that a key element of the service offered is ethical; that the engagement between Greek knowledge and Roman power they are involved in has serious moral content, contains moral messages for Rome, her rulers and elite populations more broadly.101 This is an integral part both of the way Greek culture functions within the Empire, in general – as, inter alia, a kind of ethical pole, a complex discourse of evaluative distinctions – and of the particular projects in question. In this latter respect it is, as well as being a point of undoubted personal conviction, a tool of management, of continuity and control. The literary enactment and advocacy of certain Greek values establishes a link with the classical past which can be brought forward into the present, brought to bear on the material being dealt with in any text, and, through the example and teaching of these texts and the 100

101

Dissenting, non-eclectic, and more committed sectarian approaches were still possible, however: the Methodists flourished in the Imperial period, and the Empiricists had something of a secondcentury ce revival in fortunes too. Still, the surviving works of the great Methodic physician Soranus of Ephesus still demonstrate some of the same concerns with organised expansion of the art: see, e.g., Hanson and Green (1994) for an overview of Soranus’ oeuvre. Roman and Greek elite populations, of course, both may be, and are, addressed in this context, severally and jointly.

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oeuvre they constitute, brought to bear on wider society too. This is a form of managing – reining in, ordering – imperial abundance Greek-style, as distinct from the Roman style adopted by, for example, Pliny the Elder in his Natural history. Which is, broadly speaking, what Galen attempts, in relation to both the art and his oeuvre, in his specifically taxic endeavours. He attempts to assert a basically Greek order, an order constructed according to Greek principles and associated with Greek values, which meets the demands of both continuity and control, within, and in contradistinction to, the disorderly propensities and practicalities of the contemporary Roman world. Some of the ways in which Galen casts the unfortunate present exigencies against which his struggle for order has to be waged as Roman and imperial have, indeed, already been discussed. Rome is, as has been mentioned, the main (but not sole) location of the problems of ignorance, flawed judgement and excess, which Galen confronts in On my own books and On the parts of the art of medicine. The same tribulations are less localised in On the order of my own books, and On my own opinions, but their imperial patterning remains implicit, and this theme serves to connect all these treatises. The Greekness of the ordering that these works, and the Medical art, strive to establish, and enact, is also implied rather than explicitly asserted, indeed little actual explanation is offered for the various sequences suggested at all. Still, there are, again, certain shared patterns of identification and evaluation that can be clearly discerned. What emerges from the text of On the Order of my own books (at least as it survives in Greek) and from the more summary listing of works at the end of the Medical art, is a progression from fundamentals, from works that establish basic epistemological principles and medical methodologies, through the main parts of the art – through knowledge about the human body in health, about disease and sick bodies, and about cures, the recovery (and maintenance) of health – to various reflections on it, mainly in the form of Hippocratic commentaries, then some extra philosophy and philology.102 The thematic arrangement in On my own books also follows roughly the same course. There is, then, an intention to begin at the beginning, with first principles, with what a physician, or anyone who wishes to understand medicine, needs to grasp right at the outset, before proceeding through various logical stages of knowledge acquisition to a final consolidation, elaboration and even ornamentation of the whole, although, as so often, this intention is not entirely realised, since Galen actually identifies three 102

The Greek text has a lacuna of several pages, though fuller Arabic translations may survive.

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possible starting points in On the order of my own books: the fundamental pairing of On the best sect and On demonstration (also cast in the same role at the end of the bibliography in the Medical art); the basic set of introductory works (such as On the sects for beginners and On the pulse for beginners); and (only admitted in the last line of the text) his treatise on the correct use of words.103 The Medical art also begins its listing, as it does its summary of the techn¯e itself, with works which describe the constitution of the art as a whole, and in the context of the other technai too, for this is the point from which to commence its break down – dialysis – into its part and provinces, for definition and description.104 On my own opinions also selects a distinct set of fundamental issues with which to open. Whatever the precise details, however things work out exactly, Galen is in each case applying, attempting to apply, a logical, orderly, method. In his mind, moreover, this type of systematic approach to things, working from and through first principles, is Greek. It derives from a set of general Greek intellectual values, and has, more specifically, been forged through his engagement with the greatest figures of Greek thought: Plato, Hippocrates and Aristotle, as well as Chrysippus and Epicurus. It possesses, moreover, a kind of timeless truth, an absolute and abstract validity, that contrasts with the mess, the errors, of the Roman present. If, then, on a basic structural level in his works, Galen’s idea of good order closely resembles the Roman imperial order; on the higher, more conceptual, level of the iatrik¯e techn¯e itself, these works are to be ordered according to Greek ideals, however hard that may be. Once again, however, there is no contradiction between the two. The timeless Hellenic truth is, even on Galen’s reckoning, a participant in the present Roman mess, albeit a lamentably neglected and downtrodden one; and many scholars of the ‘Second Sophistic’ would go further, figuring it, in its very timelessness, as a creation of Roman rule.105 Galen’s ideal iatric order nestles neatly within, as much as it transcends, the overarching architecture of Roman power. Space for the technai, the artes, had been established quite early on in Rome’s imperial endeavours; a contested space in many ways, but productively rather than problematically so.106 All the way through, then, in all his approaches to organising and presenting knowledge, Galen 103 104 105 106

Gal. Ord. lib. prop. 1–2 and 5 (SM ii 82.16–84.10 and 90.14–17); Ars med. 37.14 (392.9–12 Boudon). For further discussion of this plurality see Mansfeld (1994) 117–26. Gal. Ars med. 37.6 (388.4–8) (Boudon (ed.) (2000)). So Swain (1996), 65–100; and see also, e.g., Bowie (1974). Varro’s Disciplinae and Celsus Artes testify to this establishment, not to mention the proliferation of technical treatises in both Greek and Latin under the Empire.

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remains in the Roman Empire; but this is a dynamic and diverse domain, a complex cultural formation as well as a particular political structure, and the two cannot be separated. Which is to return to the imperial interplay between abundance and control, both for Galen and Rome. Both end up striking a similar balance between the two, exerting their control through formally similar mechanisms, imposing an order that allows plurality but not chaos. So, Galen’s writing, the various systematisations he proposes and enacts within, and of, his huge literary output, works for the Empire as much as the Empire works for him.

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Index

Abraham 169 Academy 13 Aedile 218 Aegae 10 Aelian 28, 31, 36, 69 Aelius Aristides 70, 246 Aelius Asclepiades 83, 268 Aelius Gallus 269, 270 Aetius 15 agricultural knowledge 24 Agrippa 35 Alcinous (doxographer) 15 Alexander the Great 19, 70 Alexandria 8, 10, 75, 244, 253, 259, 265, 266 alphabetical order 71, 72, 73, 83, 86, 249 Ammonius 52, 58, 59 Ampelius 28 Anaximander 139, 141, 142 Andreas 78, 81 Andromachus the Younger 256, 269 anthropology 7 Antigonus of Carystus 15, 136, 149 Antoninus Pius 208, 219, 226 Apollodorus 28 Apollonius of Tyana 19, 20, 28 Apuleius 17, 36 aqueducts 177–205 Arabia 269 Aratus 8 Arcesilaus 144, 145 Archigenes of Apamea 249, 258, 265, 271 archive 30, 36, 46, 173 Ariston 147 Aristophanes (comic poet) 33, 34, 76, 85 Aristotle 8, 15, 17, 37, 53, 57, 59, 70, 141, 142, 265, 276 Arius Didymus 15 Arrian 28, 37, 246 Artemidorus 28

Asclepiades Pharmakion 251, 269 Asia Minor 74, 80 Assyria 140 astrology 23, 24, 170, 229–40 astronomy 170, 229–40 Athenaeus 69–87 Athenaeus of Attaleia 265 Athenaeus of Naucratis 36, 51, 68, 69 Athenian coinage decree 206, 207 Athens 10, 11, 58, 206 Atticism 76, 80, 85, 248, 249 augury 231 Augustine 155, 167 Augustus (Octavian) 8, 21, 24, 25, 35, 36, 179, 183, 226, 230, 239 Aulus Gellius 11, 15, 17, 31, 35, 36, 43, 44, 69, 88–107 authorship 27 autopsy 77, 80, 84 Babylon 15, 19 Balbus 216, 217 barbarians 140 Barthes, Roland 28, 35 Barton, Tamsyn 230 Bassus 85 Bassus, Julius 268 Bible 34, 171 biography 50 body 23, 229–40 Boethus 258 Boethus, Flavius 251, 252, 258, 267 Boeotians 63 Bolus of Mendes 254 Bourdieu, Pierre 23 Brahmans 19 Braulio of Saragossa 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 174 British empire 5, 88 Bruun, Christer 202 Burkert, Walter 234

300

Index Cadmus 169 calendar, Roman 12 Callimachus 8, 83, 86 Callixenus 36 Cambridge History of Classical Literature 151 Carmentis 169 Carneades 148 case studies 79 Cassiodorus 167, 168 Catholicism 172 Catullus 197 Celsus (medical writer) 71, 117, 122 Celsus (lawyer) 224 Chaironeia 63 Christianity 17, 34, 146, 152, 154, 161, 168, 171 chronography 170 chronology 170 Chrysippus 139, 147, 252, 273, 276 Cicero 9, 17, 90, 105, 106, 148, 236, 237 Claudius (emperor) 20, 269 Clitomachus 139 Codex 34 coins, distribution of 222 colonialism 4, 267 Columella 24, 71, 88–107, 215, 216, 227 commentaries 29 Commodus 32 Connerton, Paul 240 Connors, Catherine 109, 131 Conte, Gian Biagio 108, 109 Corpus Hermeticum 233, 234, 239 cosmopolitanism 11 Crantor 144, 145 Crateuas 81, 255, 268 Cratinus 34, 76 creation 166, 168, 170, 173 Cuomo, Serafina 21 Curtius, Ernst 152, 167 Cynicism 11, 13, 14, 18, 19 Cyrenaics 141, 147 Damis 28 declamation 27 Delphi 11, 64, 65 demiurge 262, 265 Dicaearchus 149 Dictys of Crete 124 didactic poetry 3 Diels, Hermann 15, 135 Dio Chrysostom 11, 16, 18, 124 Diocles 77 Diocles of Carystus 70, 73, 76, 81

301

Diocles of Rhodes 15 Diogenes Laertius 15, 16, 133–49 Dioscorides of Anazarbus 77, 81, 82, 84, 254, 255, 268, 270 Diotima 143 Diphilus of Siphnos 73, 78 dogmatism 139 Domitian 202 Doody, Aude 89, 103 Dorotheus of Sidon 239 doxography 15, 135 Drusus, Livius 214 Egypt 15, 16, 47, 64, 74, 81, 140, 269 Eleusis 63 elitism 22, 23, 36 embodiment of knowledge 37, 229–40 Empedocles 141 emperor, Roman 20 Empiricists 241, 243 enkyklios paideia 10 Ennius 239 Epictetus 28 Epicureanism 13, 14, 17, 54, 146, 231, 273 Epicurus 139, 147, 237, 238, 276 epistemontics 166 epitomisation 29 Erasistratus 249, 260, 265, 271 Eratosthenes 8 ethnography 4 etymology 150–74, 214 Euclid 210 Eunapius 147 Eupolis 34, 76 Euripides 20, 145 Evans, Harry 181, 184 exile 18 Falcidian law 220 Fathers, Church 167 Favorinus 15, 18, 31, 36 feminism 7 festivals, local 64, 66, 67 Festugi`ere, Andr´e-Jean 16 Flemming, Rebecca 26 Florus 29 food 69 forgery 73, 242 Forum of Augustus 36 Foucault, Michel 6, 7, 8, 27, 30, 37, 110, 111, 127, 230 freedmen 24, 185 Frontinus 21, 28, 110, 177–205, 223 Fuhrmann, Franc¸ois 50 funeral processions, Roman 36

302

Index

Gaius (lawyer) 220, 224 Galen 11, 25, 26, 28, 45, 69–87, 241–77 Gellius, Aulus See Aulus Gellius geography 29 globalisation 16 God (Christian) 39 Goody, Jack 12, 92, 103 Gould, Stephen J. 105 grammar 170 Greek (language) 18, 80, 124, 125, 152, 169, 172, 218, 246, 270 Habinek, Thomas 12, 23, 24 Hadrian 219, 222, 225, 226 Hall, Stuart 16 Hartog, Franc¸ois 37 haruspicy 231 head-to-toe, textual organisation by 248, 258 Hebrew (language) 152, 169, 170, 171, 172 Hellenism 15, 16, 18, 23, 47, 64, 68, 71, 267, 268, 272, 274 Henderson, Jeffrey 33 Henderson, John 32, 39, 101 Heraclides of Tarentum 81, 249, 255, 268 Heraclitus 141 Hermippus 15 Herodotus 82, 84 Herophilus 260, 265, 271 Hippocratic corpus 70, 71, 76, 77, 78, 79, 82, 86, 249, 251, 253, 254, 259, 271, 272, 275, 276 Hodge, A. Trevor 181, 185, 202 Homer 8, 12, 71, 78, 82, 84, 87, 109, 110, 220 Horace 206, 228 horoscopes 229 hybridity 16 Hyginus (agromensor) 223 ideology 106 imperialism 4, 37, 38, 245, 265, 267, 275 index 88, 104 India 15, 16, 19 inscriptions 21, 66, 67 Isaeus 34 Isidore of Seville 150-74 Isis 169 Isthmian games 65 itemisation 35 Jacob, Christian 74 Jeanneret, Michel 51 Jerome 167, 171 Jews 15

Justinian 219 Justinus 29 Kennedy, Duncan 238 Ker, James 101 K¨onig, Alice 21 K¨onig, Jason 12 Lamprias (Plutarch’s brother) 60 Larensis 70, 74, 86 Latin (language) 16, 17, 18, 29, 85, 123, 125, 150–74, 213, 246, 270 Latour, Bruno 207 law 17, 27, 106, 206–28 L´evi-Strauss, Claude 35 lexicography 32, 34, 73, 75, 76, 83, 84, 86, 150–74, 249, 254 libraries 36, 69–87, 125 Lindsay, Wallace 150, 153, 162, 163 Livius Andronicus 29 Livy 20, 29, 193 local identities 46, 62, 67, 68 local knowledge 10, 11, 80, 216 Long, A.A. 234 Lucan 109 Lucian 12, 13, 14, 15, 38, 246 Lucius (redactor of Musonius Rufus) 28 Lucius Verus 225 Lucretius 17, 109, 231, 236, 237, 238 Lyceum 8 Lycus of Macedon 260, 271 Macedonia 77 Macrobius 31, 51 Maecianus 21, 206–28 Maltby, Robert 150 Manilius 23, 112, 113, 117, 229–40 Mantias 255 maps 35, 36, 192, 207 Marcus Aurelius 18, 20, 21, 70, 208, 209, 225, 227, 228, 267 Marinus 249, 259, 260, 271 Maximus of Aegeae 28 medicine 25, 26, 69, 170, 241–77 Megarians 141 Meleager (epigrammatist) 28 Menippus 109 Messalina 269, 271 Mestrius Florus 64 metrology 206–28 Michelangelo 207 middle Platonism 146 military literature 178 miscellanism 31, 43–68 Mithridates 266

Index Mnesitheus of Athens 70, 73, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 84 Moatti, Claudia 10 Moeragenes 28 Moesia 74 money 206–28 Moses 16, 169, 171 Murphy, Trevor 10, 104, 179 Musonius Rufus 18, 28 Naas, Val´erie 95 nature (physis) 226, 262, 265 Neoplatonism 146 Nero 20, 21, 22, 108, 110, 111, 127, 179 Nerva 21, 177, 179, 181, 182, 183, 184, 186, 196, 200, 201, 203, 204 Nicander 75 Nicander of Colophon 74, 75 Nigidius Figulus 104 Numenius of Apamea 16 Nutton, Vivian 84, 270 Octavia 269 Odysseus 114, 124 Olympic Games 86 Oribasius 73 Orpheus 140, 142 Ovid 12, 109, 115 Palamedes 169 Palmyra decree (metrological) 206, 207 Pamphila 31, 36 Pamphilus (grammarian) 80, 81, 82, 254, 255 Panaetius 146 Panhellenism 47, 67, 68 Papirius 214 papyrus scrolls 34 Paul (lawyer) 221 Paul (Saint) 157 Pausanias 9, 246 Peachin, Michael 182 Pecunia 213, 220, 221 pederasty 145 Pergamum 8, 9, 10, 11, 70, 247 Periplous 29, 37 Persia 140 Persius 112 Petronius 22, 24, 36, 108–32, 179 Pherecrates 34 Philip (epigrammatist) 28 Philistion 73 Philistion of Locri 78 Philodemus 136, 146, 149 philosophy 13, 16, 18, 23, 25, 28, 73, 133–49

303

Philostratus 19, 25, 28, 36, 38, 136, 147, 148 Photius 31 Phrynichus (comic poet) 34 Phrynichus (lexicographer) 32 Phylotimus 73, 77 Plato (philosopher) 13, 14, 16, 17, 19, 26, 28, 36, 53, 63, 73, 82, 143, 147, 249, 251, 265, 276 Pliny the Elder 5, 9, 32, 35, 36, 71, 88–107, 109, 110, 115, 122, 123, 179, 197, 198, 214, 232, 246, 254, 255, 259, 268, 275 Pliny the Younger 180 Plotinus 28, 214 Plutarch 11, 12, 16, 18, 31, 43–68, 69, 101, 110, 136, 147, 273, 274 Polemo 28 Pollux, Julius 28, 32, 33, 34, 38, 44, 69 Pomponius 224 Porphyry 28 Posidonius 9, 75, 146 post-modernism 111 Praxagoras 73, 77 Proculus 220 Propertius 235 Propp, Vladimir 35 Prusa 11 Ptolemy, Claudius 37, 233, 239, 273, 274 Ptolemy Philadelphus 36 Pyrrhonism 146 Pyrrhonists 141, 146 Pythagoras 139, 141, 142, 146, 169, 234 Pythagoreanism 16, 54, 117, 234 Quintilian 105, 106, 109, 127 Quintilii 75, 85 Rationalists 241, 243, 273 reading 47, 52 Renaissance 71 rhetoric 10, 22, 23, 27, 54 Riggsby, Andrew 35 Rimell, Victoria 22 ritual 12, 227 Rodgers, Robert 180, 197 Roget, John 150 Roman empire 3, 5, 8, 10, 25, 37, 46, 212, 246, 247, 257, 259, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 272, 273, 274, 275 Rome 63, 70, 80, 153, 172, 177–205, 227, 229, 244, 245, 251, 266 Rudich, Vassily 108 Rufus of Ephesus 272 Said, Edward 5, 37, 38 Sallares, Robert 77 Satan 172

304 Saturninus 146 Scarborough, John 84 Scepticism 13, 14, 139 Scribonius Largus 88–107, 253, 254, 269, 270 Second Sophistic 247, 276 Seneca the Younger 17, 36, 110, 122, 246 Septimius Severus 242, 267 Sextius Niger 81, 85, 254, 268 Sextus Empiricus 146 Siculus Flaccus 217 Simonides 169 Sisebut, King 161 Slater, Niall 108 Socrates 14, 17, 28, 112, 142, 147 sophists 22 Sosicrates of Rhodes 15 Sosius Senecio 52, 62, 63, 64 Sotion 15 Spain 80 Speusippus 83, 84 statuary 21 Stoicism 13, 14, 16, 18, 19, 26, 63, 137, 146, 234, 265, 273 Strabo 9, 26, 37, 270, 273, 274 Suda 254 Suetonius 20, 21, 90 Sullivan, John 108, 109 Sulpicius Apollinaris 29 Swain, Simon 246, 247 Symposium 43–68, 71, 73, 87, 123 Syratticism 85 Syria 75, 80 table of contents 35, 88–107, 193 Tacitus 179, 181, 198, 205 Tarsus 10 technology 88–107, 174 Terence 29 Thales 142, 146 Theodosius (philosopher) 146 Theophrastus 8, 70, 77, 82, 84, 139, 145

Index Theopompus (comic poet) 33, 34 Thrace 77 Tiberius 198, 230, 239 Timon 141 Titus (emperor) 179 Toledo, Council of 159 Too, Yun Lee 74 Trajan 29, 49, 177, 179, 181, 182, 186, 203, 222 translation 29 Trebius Germanus 219 Trogus 29 Tryphon of Alexandria 78 typography 96 Ulpian 28, 225 underground, London 207 Valerius Maximus 110, 131 Valerius Soranus 90, 104 Valkner, Alexander 150 Varro 9, 105, 122, 151, 152, 213, 214, 215 Vates 232, 235 Vettius Valens 271 Virgil 17, 29, 109, 124, 126, 129, 231, 235, 236, 237, 239 Vitruvius 21, 105, 106, 179, 183 Vizigoths 161, 173 Vrba, Elizabeth 105 Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew 10, 106 Warren, James 15 Wilkins, John 74 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 133 Xenocrates of Aphrodisias 256 Xenophanes 141 Xenophon (of Athens) 13, 28, 46, 60, 66, 136 Zeitlin, Froma 108 Zenodotus 8 Zoroastrianism 16